


Salt Water

by tzigane, Zaganthi (Caffiends)



Series: Waters [2]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Manhunter (1986), Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-26
Updated: 2005-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 03:46:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 81,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzigane/pseuds/tzigane, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiends/pseuds/Zaganthi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg was probably hallucinating that he heard another patron mutter something about the little drunk pirate. Little did they know that he was a tall drunk ass pirate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Water

  
_The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea._  
Isak Dinesen

There was something enjoyable about coming home, and Gil knew precisely what it was. Shoes were lined up in a neat rack inside the front hall closet, accompanied by a variety of jackets and a couple of sweaters. Admittedly some things never made their way into the closet; that was part of the concessions of living with someone else, after all, especially somebody as naturally disinclined towards picking up after himself as Greg.

Speaking of Greg....

Gil kicked off his shoes and placed them in the closet, closing the door behind him. He eyed the front door locks to be sure he had turned everything behind him, and then set the alarm before heading to the bedroom.

He was probably sleeping, or maybe awake and waiting for Gil. That was part of living with Greg, too, never knowing what was waiting for him, but having the ability to make a good guess at it. On his days off, Greg liked to play video games, fiddle around on the internet, sleep, masturbate, watch TiVo'd things that he'd saved to see later, and go out and do things. Sometimes that involved meeting up with other people from the shift, like Nick, and going out for fun. Sometimes it involved something as simple as shopping, getting treats, bringing back things that he knew Gil would like. Sometimes, he just kicked around town and saw cool exhibits and then dragged Gil to them later.

Gil couldn't remember ever being so happy just to be.

There had always been so much to worry about, so much with which to be obsessed. There was Jack, and there was Molly, and there was Hannibal. Now, none of those things applied. Jack seemed to be happy having Sara to do his dirty work for him, and Hannibal's goodbye a year ago had been just that -- goodbye. For the first time in years, Molly had sent a Christmas card. It had been addressed to both of them, which was fitting since they had a house together now. After Millander, after Jack, it had been hard for Gil to go back to his apartment for more than just clothes or the odd book, and when he'd brought his laptop over to Greg's....

It had been running away, of a sort. Running away from the person he had been before, from the tired dredge of secrets that had been in the spare room. His secrets were still in a closet, but now they lived in relative peace beneath boxes of Greg's bad eighties punk vinyl, and the odd shirt that fell off a hanger. Everything had a place, more or less, and if Gil was right, Greg's place was going to be somewhere in bed.

Now he just needed to see if he was asleep, or awake.

He strolled through the living room, pausing to glance at the television. It was playing, but it was also muted. That probably meant that Greg had been watching TiVo after all, and had fallen asleep in the middle of it only to wake up and hit the mute button sometime in the night. That would mean....

Easy enough to continue on to the bedroom to find what he knew would be there.

Greg was sprawled out over the bed, the covers bunched around him in a way that only Gil could find appealing. That was mostly because there was also a faint line of spittle leaking from the corner of Greg's mouth and onto his pillow, arms wide open and clutching faintly at sheets and the three feet long beanie stuffed microbe that rested under one arm. Greg had fallen in love with the crazy stuffed microbes when he'd found a website full of them, and Greg's body pillow was long lost, as it had a tendency to get tossed to the floor in the middle of the night.

For Greg's twenty-eighth birthday, Gil had gotten him a Common Cold plushie and a hand-stuffed version of the Black Death to replace the body pillow. For some reason, Black Death never made its way off the mattress unless Gil put it there, or it fell off the bed while they were having sex. Greg was usually as quick to get out of the wet spot as he was to put Black Death back on the bed. Gil understood, in a way. It was easier for him to sleep when he didn't feel alone, and Greg was a heavy sleeper when he did sleep, but.... They weren't used to being alone now, despite long hours.

Gil started to unbutton his shirt, and decided that heaven was successfully closing a case with a solid slate of evidence, and then coming home to that. Maybe Greg would drool on him instead of the pillow if he got into bed quietly enough. Strange to think that drool would make him feel at home now, make him feel that he was in the right place.

It didn't take long to strip down to bare skin and maneuver onto his side of the bed, lifting the covers ever so gently to shift them higher over Greg so that they could both be more or less covered. Greg didn't move, but his hand twitched on Black Death, fingers crawling faintly over the plush fur. "Mmmrrph." Useless sleep noises, Gil knew, sounds that didn't mean anything more than exactly what they sounded like. When Greg said mmmrrph, he meant mmmrrph. For a while, he'd thought it was slurred words, but no. No, slurred words and sleep babble sounded entirely different than hums and grunts and sighs. When Greg woke up, and inevitably woke up Gil, they'd make use of their time doing easy day-to-day things, as easy as the way that Gil shifted to get beneath Greg. All he had to do was insinuate himself a little, slide right up to Black Death, and Greg did most of the work for him. It was as if Gil's body heat was some sort of automatic signal to slide in close and snuggle up with Greg's stuffed toy squished between them, but once Greg got close enough, his arm shifted, and Gil could slide Black Death out from between them and to Greg's other side.

"Rmm," Greg mumbled, and pressed his face into Gil's shoulder. Ah. Drool.

Gil could honestly say that allowing someone to drool on you and thinking that it was all right had to be a sign of being hopelessly in love. Greg made it easy to smile, and made it easy for Gil to close his eyes and sleep. He made it easy to breathe, and gave a lighter edge to his worst cases just by waving when Gil walked past the DNA lab.

Being hopelessly in love was good, third time being the charm and all of that. Greg was a charm, a charm against bad luck and unhappiness, the kind of person who just naturally seemed able to smile all the time, and that made a huge difference in everything. It meant that Gil could smile, that he could take everything with a grain of sugar instead of salt. With Greg, everything was optimism, even when Gil thought that he'd never manage to see the bright side of things again.

The only dark side was the steady hearing loss.

It had started before Greg, before 'peridot'. He'd lost some tonal ranges over a year ago, but it was so fractional that it wasn't a problem. Exquisitely good hearing had been taken down to merely good hearing. Then he'd lost chunks and leaps and bounds, and it came and it went.

It went a lot now, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hide the simple reality of it. The underwater noise was disorienting, reading lips sapped his concentration, and.... Surgery, simply put, scared him. It was all or nothing -- if it worked, it worked, and if it failed, he was spectacularly fucked. A world without sound, without a key means of communication.

Without Greg's voice.

Deafness wasn't something he often thought about in bed, but it was hard not to think about it when Greg's muffled snores turned to purest silence, leaving him alone with the vibrations he felt against his arm coming from Greg's chest. He hadn't mentioned his hearing trouble to Greg; didn't want to let him know. It would only worry him needlessly. Gil wasn't stupid. He didn't honestly believe that Greg hadn't noticed. He just hoped that Greg hadn't put two and two together to realize exactly how bad it was as yet.

He was good at hiding it, and good at making up for it and a thousand other things that Lady Heather had bluntly pointed out. Someone moved away, he followed, tracked their mouths. Lip-reading was getting easier as it became more of a necessity, and soon....

Maybe the underwater noises would be all he had, mixed with vibrations. Probably soon. He needed to do something about it, needed to gather up his courage because there had been so many disorienting moments lately. It was worst when it happened during sex. Worst when he couldn't hear Greg moaning and shifting, pushing into him or up to him, scrabbling at the sheets. There had been a time when the scrape of fingers across cotton sheets had been enough to make Gil even harder, enough just because he knew what it was doing to Greg. Now.... Now, that was almost a thing of the past.

God.

He didn't want it to be.

"You're thinking too loud," Greg informed him against his shoulder, and being able to hear that.... well, it relieved some of that current worry. "Ztop."

"Sorry." He shifted his hand, clutched loosely at Greg and tried to force himself to relax. It was less paradoxical than it seemed, because a few deep breaths actually obtained that goal. He didn't want to tell Greg that he was scared, or afraid that he was going deaf, or that he'd just solved an amazingly strange case and now they knew that the horse had been a mule for one embittered steward with family jewels as an interest.

He wanted to say 'I love you' but he didn't say that, either. He just clutched a little because he didn't want to wake Greg up more than he already had.

"Cute when you think loud," Greg mumbled, and shifted. He was hot, almost too hot, and it was faintly uncomfortable. Gil didn't want to move, though. "Makes me wanna...." Interesting flex of position, there. A leg slid over his, the edge of Greg's hip pressed against his crotch.

"Mmm, what was I thinking out loud?"

"Dunno. Weren't talking," Greg informed him, squirming. "Just thinking loud. Can feel it in you, yanno. Haven't slept long. Watched some stuff. Bought some ice cream." Probably something with peanut butter. "Some yogurt. Got kiwis."

"You're not going to try to use a potato peeler on them this time...?" He shifted with Greg, and made a motion with one leg to edge the sheets down a little. Cheek to cheek for a moment felt good, a prelude to getting a sleepy kiss from Greg. He could faintly, faintly taste peanut butter and chocolate and Greg, with a hint of drool.

"Hm-mm." Greg smiled, and Gil could feel it. So good. "Gonna make you peel it for me," he declared, sighing and draping his arms closer around Gil. The air-conditioning came on, and Gil was grateful for that. Greg was a furnace just then. "Like it when you do it. 's best."

"Okay. After we sleep a little." After. They had two overlapping days off, and it felt like all the time in the world. After those two days, he'd think about making the appointment for surgery. Dive into it with both feet. Maybe talk to Greg. No. definitely talk to Greg.

No lies, even if he simply didn't talk about some things. It was probably what pissed Greg off the most frequently, and Greg wasn't afraid to yell at him about it. That was a large difference between 'then' and 'now'. Hannibal would have considered it uncultured and found some better way to punish him for it; Molly would have moped about and grumbled at him sweetly. Greg yelled, and occasionally threw things that broke with wonderful, resounding crashes.

Gil would miss those, too, if he didn't do something soon.

"G'sleep," Greg encouraged him, taking a deep breath and letting it out. Between one moment and the next, Gil could tell that he was gone again.

It made it easier for him to settle Greg on top of him, feel the weight of Greg's head on his shoulder, Greg's body where it overlapped atop of his own. Sleep. After, they could pick back up where Greg had sleepily started. Maybe Greg would fuck him, and then he could peel kiwis and they could watch bad movies for a few hours.

Despite the most dragging, circular thoughts, Gil still managed a faint smile by the time he closed his eyes. Nothing else mattered, because he was home.

* * *

Breakfast was all right. Greg had finally managed to make a few things without utterly destroying them, and scrambled cheese eggs were high on that list. When accompanied by a carefully timed use of the toaster between the stove and the microwave, breakfast was usually nearly totally edible.

It had been an almost perfect evening so far. Greg had a thing for sucking Gil off lately, so waking up had been more than just pleasant. It had been pretty much incredible, actually, followed by kisses and the vague assault of plague bacteria bapping around his shoulders while Greg laughed.

If only that sound hadn't been cut off in the middle by Gil's hearing loss.

It was a palpable, agonizing pain of loss, one that he'd probably failed to mask with his sudden tight embrace and crushing kiss. He'd needed to feel that laugh when he couldn't hear it and.... He knew Greg had picked up on it, his odd reaction that didn't involve trying to steal the plague from Greg or hitting him back with it.

Hopefully Greg wouldn't be as angry as he'd been when he'd realized that Gil's mother was dead and Gil simply never said anything. That had come after the move, when he'd been trying to work out what needed to be kept and what needed to be quietly burned out on the porch.

"You know, if you keep putting it off, it's going to keep trying to come back and bite you in the ass."

No, he shouldn't have been surprised that Greg said that, or that he was looking directly at him, the last of the breakfast dishes slotted into the dishwasher. Gil continued carefully working with the knife, slicing one of the kiwis into the bowl in front of him. Apparently he no longer needed to think about when the perfect time to bring it up would be, or gather up the courage to blurt it out. Greg had effectively taken the wind out of his sails, so Gil didn't have much problem in thinking for a moment. He hadn't been ready to address it. There were just some questions for which he didn't have an answer.

"I thought it might go away."

"Ignoring something doesn't make it disappear," Greg pointed out. He reached out and carefully took the next thin slice of kiwi before Gil's knife had even finished slicing it. "Sometimes, it just makes things worse, and I don't think it's me, so...." He shrugged. "I figure if you say it, that'll make it real enough for you to do something about it."

A year and change of living like that, and Greg knew how to read him altogether too well. Gil almost went back to slicing, but he stopped himself, turned his head a little to look at Greg. "I've been losing my hearing for a while now."

But Greg knew that, and Gil could tell that maybe Greg had known for longer than he'd ever let on. There was a tilt to Greg's head, a tip to his mouth when Gil said the words. He reached out and stole another slice of kiwi, watching Gil carefully. "So, have you made an appointment to have everything checked out? What can we do?"

Not 'what can _you_ do'. With Greg, it was 'what can _we_ do'. That alone made Gil's mouth shift, the smile tiny, but present.

We. We implied a lot of things, concepts and phrases that were important the world over, said simply and floridly. Gil could appreciate the almost poetic level of implication in the word when Greg said it. "We.... I'm going to have to go in for surgery. I just need to call and schedule." He could get them to do both ears at once, never mind that it would plunge him into effective deafness for a week because of the packing, and agonizing adjustment for days after.

If it worked.

Gil made another slice, and offered it to Greg right away.

"Okay." Okay, and Greg took the slice of fruit, but he stood up to do it, and then he was kissing Gil, and that was more than just okay. That was what he needed, deeply, and then it was over and Greg was settling down in the chair across from him. "Have they given a list of stuff you'll need with you? I'll make sure that I get time off for it so that I can stay with you while you're still in the hospital."

"It's outpatient." That implied minimally invasive and relatively safe, except where it wasn't, and that Gil was perhaps a touch of a coward about it. "So...." So there was no reason for him to have put it off so long and no reason for him to be wound up. Gil finished with that kiwi, and reached to start peeling one more fuzzy fruit. "I suppose I wasn't thinking rationally."

"It's kind of hard to be rational when you don't feel good, or when you're scared that something's going to happen to you. Poppa Olaf used to say that he knew God wouldn't give him anything he couldn't handle. He just wished that God didn't trust him so much. Then he'd quote Uncle Remus and say that you can't run away from trouble, 'cause there ain't no place that far." Bare shoulders shrugged, and Greg continued munching on kiwi. Gil knew he could eat them until his belly bulged. He'd seen it happen. "Speaking of which, he says he's coming to visit sometime next week, so I'd better call and tell him that you're having surgery."

Gil had long since met Greg's Poppa Olaf. He had never met Greg's parents. It was one of those things that told him that he wasn't the only person guilty of keeping secrets simply by not explaining. He hadn't asked much about why Greg didn't gush about his parents, but Poppa Olaf had been a delight. A real delight, for a dirty old man with a quote or a phrase for everything, and.... That was probably why Gil had liked him. Greg's insanity was clearly hereditary.

"It shouldn't be too hard to get in or to heal up afterwards." If it worked, but he couldn't quite say that aloud -- after all, as Greg had said, it might make it real.

"Would you mind if I went to the next office visit with you?" Another slice of kiwi disappeared. "I'd like to ask some questions, make sure I know all the right stuff we'll have to do so that you get better as fully as possible." Fully. Not quickly.

Greg didn't want him to be deaf anymore than Gil did. Fully better was important, no matter how long it took -- except that it was really a one-shot deal. Gil cut a piece of kiwi for himself, and then took his time chewing over the texture of a hundred tiny seeds. "Greg.... have I told you recently that I love you?"

"Hm. I think you might have mentioned it yesterday evening, and I'm pretty sure you were kind of chanting it when I got your cock halfway down my throat earlier," Greg teased him, reaching out and lifting another slice, but offering it to Gil. "And you know, since I kind of love you, too, that makes life pretty good."

He had to tilt his head down a little and take it with his teeth because he was already starting to cut again, slowly but surely. Greg had something against fresh fruit potentially going a little less than fresh, because Gil had yet to see any piece of fruit go uneaten over a period of time longer than two days.

"It does. So you get to suffer through the waiting room and the next office visit with me. Wednesday, I think, after work. I'll have to check."

"Wednesday won't be a problem. After all, the worst thing that can happen is that work can run over a little, right?" The sound of that gave Gil a faint chill, almost a strange sort of precognition. He'd felt it before, of course, long ago, when he had been Will and not Gil, but it was out of place. It wasn't quite right. Maybe it was just fear about the surgery, about his steadily fading hearing.

Maybe he'd go and she'd tell him that the calcification had spread to his inner ear. Something like that, in which case he wouldn't be scheduling surgery so much as he'd.... have to feel Greg out about sign language. If it was a lost cause, all he could do would be to race to beat the end and make the most of it.

Gil knew he wouldn't even have to feel Greg out about sign language, if it was going to come to that. The tiny thread of fear was just subconscious wondering about when he, his problems, putting up with him, would cross the line for Greg from 'okay' to 'had enough'. If such a line existed.

After all, to fear something was to grant it power.

"Right, and since it isn't near to Wednesday yet.... Do you want to take this over to the sofa and put another movie in?"

"That sounds pretty damn perfect," Greg said, sliding out of his chair. It was a good thing the rest of the office didn't know Greg liked lounging around naked on their furniture. Nick probably wouldn't ever sit on the sofa again. "Hey, I got that diary thing. _Ellen Rimbauer_ , you know? Want to see?"

The only thing Greg liked better than zombie movies were, apparently, movies about haunted houses. They were inventive and the special effects were usually bold, so.... So why not? "Yeah. Hold on a minute, and I'll wash the grapes. Do we still have the Discovery Channel special on scorpions saved?"

It was nice to see Greg smile like that, even with the news about the surgery. "Of course. I know how you like those things. There's even something coming on about tarantulas later tonight. Want me to record that, too? I don't think the house one is too long. We could maybe watch it...."

Two more slices fell into the bowl, and Gil rinsed the knife off quick. Grapes were in the bottom drawer of the fridge, fairly easy to find and snap off a large stem from the big bag. "We can just watch it. The first half hour is usually introductory parts, anyway."

Gil was going to have naked Greg lounging over his lap, eating fruit while they watched the fruit of Stephen King's mind. It wasn't much wonder that Catherine occasionally shook her head in wonder at them both.

"You're the boss," Greg teased him, and tucked their chairs up under the kitchen table before moving in to the living room to fiddle around with the remotes. Why there were so many, Gil never asked. He didn't have to because the answer was clear: the man who died with the largest number of remotes won. Gil had a faint suspicion that no matter how many Greg collected, some man in the back end of nowhere had eight satellite dishes in his yard, four televisions, and ten remotes for all of the things attached to each one.

As long as he had two remotes for his stereo (one for the system itself and one for the receiver that almost everything was plugged into), and Greg, Gil was a happy man.

Even when Greg had to work and Gil didn't, the house was still more of a comfortable thing than it had been when he'd stayed alone in his apartment, or even Greg's. Comfortable clutter met with mounted insects hung on the walls, cd collections had melded, most of Gil's underwear had been claimed in the name of Greg Needing Things to Slink Around the House In, and books. Between them both, Gil decided they could probably open a library of eclectic books that no one but them would ever want to read.

Gil carried the fruit bowl into the living room, and settled into his end of the sofa, waiting for Greg to stop fiddling with the remotes and relax back. "So, is this going to make that other thing make more sense, or am I going to have to read the books to get it?"

"I have no idea, actually. With any luck, it'll make more sense, but it's a lot more likely that we'll just sit back and go, 'Oooo, cool house'," Greg decided. That was part of the addiction to haunted house movies, Gil knew, probably because he had gone to UC at Berkeley, and there were a lot of interesting old houses there. Living in San Francisco probably hadn't helped, either. Then again, maybe it was in the blood. Poppa Olaf had rambled on about Victorians during his first visit, and Gil knew Greg had taken him driving to show off some of the stranger Las Vegas houses.

There wasn't a shortage of those -- it was Vegas, after all, and Poppa Olaf had been more than happy to get a few 'locals tours' of the place and the history. He'd also made them take him to a strip club, which had been an experience.

"Ooo, cool house," Gil teased, getting an arm around Greg's waist before he pulled at him. "If you're going to be naked, you're going to be on my lap."

"Such a hardship," Greg sighed, settling in. The biggest problem with having Greg in his lap could be summed up in the words 'bony ass'. Gil loved to watch him walk, all sexy wiggle, but the squirm of it against his thighs was occasionally painful.

Ahhh. Right up until then. That was nice. Greg relaxed back against him, limbs loose and comfortable, wild hair against the side of his face where Greg leaned into him. Greg would switch position ten times over the course of an hour, but for now he could insure that Greg wouldn't move for a while by putting the fruit bowl in Greg's lap.

"I'll find a way to bear it. Since you have the remote, you can start it."

"He who owns the remote is the boss," Greg declared, pointing it and pressing one of the myriad buttons. The more buttons a remote had, the more Greg liked it. "At least for now. Maybe not for long."

"No, not for long." Gil's mouth curled into a smile as he pulled a grape from the bowl that was sitting over Greg's penis. Greg surfed through the TiVo menu, and Gil was content to relax and wait for the main event to start.

Later, they could start their own main event.

* * *

Some days were Marilyn Manson days.

Some days were NIN days.

Today was oldies day. If anybody dropped into his lab, he'd probably die of humiliation before he could get everything turned off. Greg figured there were worse things, like spending the last few days worrying like hell about Gil's hearing. It wasn't like worrying was going to help anything; it wouldn't. It was still his prerogative to worry, and it wasn't like anybody could tell him not to worry, not when he'd done a lot of sneaky research of his own by checking the history on Gil's laptop.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't exactly kosher. Definitely not kosher, but he had wanted to know. He had waited until Gil had told him about it to look, but it was obviously deeply difficult for him to talk about it, all the same. Greg had only looked to find out the name of the condition so he could look it up himself on his Power Book.

The centrifuge was running, so Greg only had to keep an eye on it while he caught up on the inside of his brain. Earlier, Gil had been out looking for Jason Kent, but he'd taken Brass and a few officers with him, so that had made the whole 'being around dangerous killers' thing a lot less scary than usual for Greg. He'd come back to Greg with nail clippers and a bit of nail that Greg was going to process pretty soon. There was still swing-shift spill over to catch and run, so he was letting that go and not thinking about going to accompany Gil to get his hearing checked and surgery scheduled. No, not thinking about it.

Oh, hell, of course he was thinking about it, and worrying about it, and a complete wreck about it. It was Gil, and he loved Gil, and he knew how much it had to be scaring him for the other man to even try and ignore it. It wasn't like it was going to go away, and Gil knew that. He had to know it. He wasn't stupid. He was just.... He was scared, and Greg completely understood that. It scared him, too.

If he had been going deaf, he probably would have tried to ignore it, too. Greg wasn't sure, and if it was already too late or if the surgery didn't work -- even though it worked something like 98% of the time -- he didn't know what they'd do. They hadn't exactly talked about it, either. Gil had spent a lot of time with Greg over their 'weekend', glued to him, enjoying things with Greg and not talking about it any more than they had over the kiwi.

Gil was a master of Not Talking, and Greg could understand that. After all, there were things that he avoided talking about, too; his parents, for example, which was something to continue avoiding as long as his poppa would let him. Knowing Poppa, they'd be having that discussion the next time he came to visit. That discussion was going to completely suck, actually, and he didn't want to have it. Not really. What was he supposed to do? Call them up and go 'Hey, Mom, Dad? Yeah, you know how I changed my address because I moved? And I told you I had a boyfriend? And you never called me back? He's my boss, who's roughly your age, and he's incredibly hot in the sack'?

When he'd told his Poppa, it had been easier, weirdly easier, because Poppa Olaf had half-guessed and started with, "So, you finally fell in love?"

A faint tinge of smell caught Greg's nose, a whiff of something that was out of place. What the hell??

Nothing was supposed to smell like that in the lab -- it wasn't isopropyl or an old sample or detergent. No, it smelled like burning plastic, and Greg started to turn towards the table in the middle to see what it was.

Sniffing made the direction of it obvious -- the fume hood. He could smell it, getting sharper and hotter in his nose, and his first reaction was stupid. He knew it even when he turned towards it, flung the hood open to try and do something about it.

Knew it even more when whatever it was exploded in his face.

WHOOOM.

The sound was something like Greg imagined going deaf would be, except there was no way he could think coherently enough to know that. Heat. Heat and sharp and blood and God, everything hurt. It hurt. His face. His back, except for the center, where nothing hurt at all.

Was it still burning?

Was it...?

* * *

The whole world slowed the way it only could in the midst of a disaster. Later, later Gil would play it over and over in his mind until the memories were worn thin with his multiple replays, until he questioned the whole event and wondered what parts of it had been imposed over the reality by the logic of his brain.

There had been a concussive noise, and then there had been the blast of heat when he'd turned, like a fool, like any human being, towards the source. It was a wonder that humanity had lived so long with a reaction like that, the sheer lack of survival that was inherent in turning towards one's doom and stopping to watch it happen.

Only it hadn't been his doom. He'd only been stepping into the hallway to ask Greg about the nail clippers, and then Greg had been coming towards him, through the window.

Through the glass.

Gil felt the flying shards all around him, cutting into his face, a sharp pain ripping through one palm, but feeling that was nothing compared to what he saw across the way. It was nothing in comparison to Greg lifting his head and then putting it down again, blood flowing stickily from beneath his face to pool, dragging Gil's attention away from the rags on his back, the obvious burns, the worry that something else would explode at any moment.

He'd dropped the file he'd been carrying, and it was lost in the sudden rush of water and alarms that went off. He didn't care, couldn't care because he was crossing over to Greg through the glass, checking his pulse. It was easy to fall into the patterns of checking that a victim was still alive, even though he knew something else could go. He knew that he was supposed to get out of there. Evacuate.

He wasn't going to leave Greg. He wasn't going to leave, and he didn't want to move him. He didn't, couldn't....

Couldn't hear. Couldn't hear the fire or the alarms, or Greg's obviously rough breathing. He could see the blood, the gash that was obviously too near Greg's eye, could _be_ Greg's eye, and....

"....ssom!.....ave to...."

Nick.

He could hear Nick. Not clearly, but enough to jerk his head up to look up and over from his crouch beside Greg's body, fingers still on his pulse. Warping sound, but he could talk, breathe, feel Greg's pulse hammering under his fingers. "We need an ambulance."

"....on the way....let....ove...."

It took concentration to read lips, and Gil didn't have it. He couldn't pull himself together enough for it. "What?" he asked, and then felt stupid. Of course.

Of course.

Emergency personnel was on the way. They probably needed to move Greg somewhere safer, somewhere away from the chemicals coming out of the automatic fire suppression system to smother the fire.

So he shifted, brain spinning too fast to do much good, waiting to follow Nick's lead. The lab had blown up. His lab, the only truly safe place in the world, and the DNA section had just blown up with Greg in it, chewed Greg up and spit him out.

Nick was moving Greg, and all Gil could seem to do was watch, stay detached, and then there were EMTs from somewhere, and a bed, and he could get up. He had to get up, and walk beside Greg, because there was blood on his face and blisters on his back and burns on his neck.

He had to be the Supervisor, had to protect all of his shift, had to.... take control, even as his hearing warped back to normal. He had to go with Greg to the hospital, though, had to be there because anything could happen at any minute. The EMT was talking to him, so he had to be doing a good job of seeming in control. Jacqui was looking at him from a handful of feet away, Archie's hands were shaking, and Sophia was pale just behind him, mouth compressed. Thank God Ecklie had prompted her to move to night shift when they had lost Sara. Maybe he could....

No. No, he couldn't, because he had to be the one in charge, didn't he? They hadn't signed domestic partner agreements, they hadn't done a lot of things. Gil had thought there was time for that.

There wasn't any time anymore.

"Partial to full thickness burns on his neck and back, laceration across the orbital bone...." He kept pace, and they were wheeling Greg towards an ambulance, the early morning light catching his hair and turning it gold where the russet hadn't puddled, streaking and clumping.

Even then, he was trying, Gil could tell. He was trying to open his eyes, even the bloody one. He was trying to move, and Gil knew that Greg was looking for him.

"I'll handle this. We'll call Catherine." Ah, Sophia. "You're going to need that hand stitched up, anyway."

He hadn't liked it at first, too much Will in her method, talking everything out, talking it through, talking talking talking. She was competent, though; smart and she was probably more likely to take his job than Catherine would be. Catherine was off, but it was an emergency and in any emergency, they were on call whether they were or they weren't.

Gil hadn't even noticed that his hand was serious until he glanced down. No, still not serious compared to Greg. "I.... page me. Covallo will be arriving any minute."

He needed to move fast if he was going to go with Greg. God, he'd lie, push, whatever he needed to do to get in there with Greg, because they hadn't thought they'd need to think about the paperwork. They should have thought about it. They should have considered it. They should have.

"Duck your head." That was Hank, the EMT that Sara had been dating, his hand easy on Gil's head. "You want to be careful not to hit it on the way.... there you go."

There he went, and there was Greg. They were concentrating on covering his face, covering his eye, and Gil couldn't see. Sterile pads were placed over the top and Greg was hooked up to an IV. They looked like they were thinking about intubating him, Gil knew those half-motions, but Greg was breathing. Greg was breathing okay on his own, so whatever it was hadn't gotten into his lungs. Shuddering breaths, but he was breathing.

Gil had just committed career suicide, and all he could do was murmur 'thanks' to Hank and brace himself when the ambulance started. Keep out of the way, and keep watching Greg, willing another breath to follow each new one, willing everything to be all right in the end, when he was sure nothing was going to be all right again.

"Let me see your hand. You're bleeding a bunch, so let's get that patched up, huh?"

Gil didn't watch while he did it. He just watched Greg, watched them slide that tube down his throat, and for the first time in years, or maybe ever, he prayed. He wasn't sure to whom or to what, or even if it was just a prayer to Greg's subconscious. It just was.

He had to pull through. Greg was going to, because if he didn't.... If he didn't, Gil didn't know what came next.

* * *

Dark words swam in Gil's head, the sort of thing that he hadn't felt in.... well, a long time. At least a year. Greg was brightness, brilliance, not phrases like 'peri-orbital trauma' or 'due to the force of the blast, certain facial bones have been fractured and there is a greater chance of associated life threatening injuries'. Those words had no business being anywhere near Greg. The ophthalmologist on call had breezed past Gil so fast that his head had nearly spun off.

How long had he been at Desert Palms? How long had he been sitting there? Gil couldn't guess.

He didn't want to guess, only he was lucky that he found anything out at all, passing snippets that maybe didn't have anything to do with Greg. They weren't letting him see Greg yet, wouldn't let him in no matter what he said, so Gil was planning to camp out in the waiting room. If he tried to talk to the nurses again, he was going to hit something, because there was no reason for him to be kept in the dark.

"You're looking kinda fretful there, I'm thinking. I expect they've not had much to say?"

Poppa Olaf?

What was Greg's Poppa Olaf doing in Vegas? At the hospital?

Good God, what DAY was it?

"There, there, now. Don't be worrying so much. That nice girl, Catherine, called me," Poppa declared. "I didn't bother so much with the stopping at the house. Knew you'd not be there."

Gil sucked in one slow breath, and then another, and lifted his head to look at the old man that he hadn't expected to be there. Had they called him there as Greg's next of kin? Or had it bee.... oh, Catherine, just like he'd said. So they'd both be in the dark, then. "I wasn't expecting you to come here...."

"Eh." The sound meant everything and nothing. Definitely an inherited trait. "I was coming all the same, to see you boys. Gregor said that you were having a Procedure." Gil could hear the capital P. "He was fretful you'd be alone, like he worries and sends me this silly thing." Poppa Olaf waved a cell phone in his gnarled hand. "The plane, it was boarding when she gave the call, and so, here I am."

He'd been working so hard not to show expression, not to let something slip accidentally -- grief, anger, frustration, sadness, anything at all -- while he waited and waited, that now Gil wasn't sure what to do. Look at Greg's grandfather and let the surreal feeling that came with his presence seep in, sure, but if he stopped concentrating he was going to fall apart, and he couldn't. Not

Not when his cell phone was going off inside of his jacket. Gil knew it was Covallo before he even reached for it. "Thank you. Maybe you can get in to see him...."

"Mm." Poppa nodded at him and then reached out to take the phone away from him. "We'll be going in to see him, we will, and you'll be turning that off, I expect. Wouldn't want them to catch us with them." Gil's phone was pocketed with Poppa's, and that was that. "Let's go find us a nurse."

"That's...." His supervisor, he started to say, and didn't. It was easier to let it happen. Let someone, even an old man like Greg's poppa, force his dereliction of duty, because he wouldn't be able to do it himself. No matter what, he had to do his job.

Gil told himself that was why he felt so stomach sick when he stood up. It wasn't worry, no, it was guilt over abandoning work, it.... It wasn't like anyone but him would've been expected to answer the beck and call of the lab director in a time like that. Just Grissom, who was having an inappropriate relationship with a lesser ranked employee who worked with him, who. Who was scared that maybe he wouldn't get in to see Greg after all.

"All right." He crumpled up the little empty paper coffee cup he didn't remember getting, and stood.

"Come along," Poppa told him. "You look singed, also, Gilbert." The fact that the elderly man used full names was always sort of amusing. "You fared better than Gregor? Is good. Do they know, yet, what caused the explosion? Someone will have to call his mother and father, and they'll wonder."

He wasn't really a Gilbert. More of a William, and definitely more of a Gil than any of that. It was faintly amusing, but not as much as it usually would've been. "Someone will be investigating, and...." Calm, he could stay calmer now that he wasn't exactly alone, now that he was keeping patient pace towards the nurses' desk beside Poppa Olaf. "I'll call them."

It would at least be something to do.

"No, no, my boy. It's a job for me, I'm afraid. Your job, more like, is to make sure our baby boy is safe and.... well, that his condition is as good as possible." That implied a lot of unpleasant things, all in a handful of words. It made Gil want to tell Poppa Olaf that none of it was true, except that it was. It wasn't just some nightmare dredged up from the pits of hellish memory and made into something fresh and new.

"He'll be all right." Except Gil knew it wasn't true, or if it was, it would take a lot of time. Full thickness burns on his neck and back meant skin grafts and nerve damage. Those weren't things he associated with Greg, they weren't things he ever wanted Greg to feel. Greg and the concept of damage didn't belong together.

And Greg's eye....

"We'll see, then." Poppa was an elderly man, true, but he moved along fairly quickly for a man with his general health problems. He had never asked Greg exactly how old his grandfather was, but watching him move made Gil wonder in an abstract sort of way. It took his mind off of his current trouble a little. Drift. Olaf hadn't aged too strikingly well, but he'd been a laborer, a bricklayer at one point, and he'd had Greg's mother, and some assorted other children that Gil never heard too much about, when he was young. Maybe he could work through it in his mind.

Doing that was easier than telling Greg's grandfather that Greg simply had to be all right, or. Or Gil didn't know what he'd do, except stand with Poppa Olaf when the gentlemanly looking man smiled at the nurse behind the desk. At least he didn't move as disconcertingly fast as one older man that Gil knew.

Now probably wasn't the time to be thinking about that.

"Excuse me," Poppa said most politely. That seemed a good place to start, because the nurse smiled back at him, and that was more than Gil had gotten. "I have come to vacation with my grandson here in your fair city, only to arrive and find that there has been a terrible accident. Instead of seeing him at the airport, his partner tells me that he is here. We would like information, please, and to see him, if we may."

Ah. So that 'we' was inherited, as well. Or learned -- learned behavior was more likely. Maybe Olaf believed in sharing burdens, so the 'we' was appreciated just then. Seeing Greg and learning what had happened to him was a burden that Gil wanted to bear with the older man.

The nurse was looking past Olaf, and peered at Gil for a moment before she looked back to Poppa Olaf. "You're here about whom, specifically?" Oh, she knew, she knew because Gil had already asked her.

"Gregor," Poppa declared. "Gregor Hojem Sanders. My grandson. There is proper paperwork, I believe, listing me as next of kin. We have not made the appropriate paperwork rearrangements for Gilbert." Gilbert, William, William Gilbert, and Gregor Hojem. Funny, Gil thought. "As this is an emergency matter, I feel sure that you will be kind, as needed, and not make this most difficult?"

"If I could see an ID...?" She was still eyeing Gil even as she tapped up Greg's information in the computer, so he guessed it was personally against him that she was being so cautious. Greg claiming that he was Gil's son hadn't gotten a batted eyelash, but Gil being honest and saying he was Greg's partner.... had probably failed because Greg was young enough to be his son.

Gil's head suddenly hurt worse.

"Of course, of course." Poppa was reaching for his wallet, pulling it out, and there was no doubt. Even if Greg didn't look like himself, how many people could possibly have Hojem as their name in Las Vegas? Just taking a wild guess, Gil wouldn't think there would be very many. "I raised him from a boy myself. Sweet, sweet boy. Parents were very young, you know, and Olga and I were older, more able to have such a bright boy with us all of the time. I have his baby pictures," Poppa offered, reaching for those as well. That seemed to satisfy the nurse.

Poppa Olaf would have shown them to her anyway, even if she'd seemed satisfied with the ID, but he guessed that was because Poppa Olaf enjoyed showing them.

"All right. I'll take you down to his room -- just a few minutes at a time right now, they're still treating him."

Just a few minutes was all that Gil needed to keep going. "Thank you."

"We thank you," Poppa agreed, slowly putting away the pictures. He had sent some to Gil in an envelope once, pictures that had made him laugh. Poppa dusting off Greg's dirty butt, Greg leaning down to pick up Easter eggs, Greg in a terrible asymmetric haircut, Greg ready for the prom.

Gil could only pray he'd see those bright smiles again. He'd seen, caught just enough to know that there was an eye injury, and he knew that eyes were so close to the brain, knew that the force to hurt that area was enough to easily damage behind it. He knew that, logically, but he had to keep hoping for the very best while his mind cluttered up with old dreamlike memories.

Josh, sucking in his last breaths. The human body was so fragile, so easy to break if you knew the best places to do it, the best ways to do it.

"We will be fine," Poppa assured Gil, following the nurse through the door once she had tapped in the numbers on the number pad to allow them through. "Gregor, too, will be fine, because he must. Gregor is a strong boy, Gilbert."

"I know." Stronger than anyone had given Greg credit for -- strong enough to shoot a man and strong enough to put up with sheer terror and more ups and downs in a short period of time than most people had their whole lives. "And the department will work out what happened."

That didn't seem to matter very much with the prospect of seeing Greg so very close.

"There is no doubt that you will discover exactly what happened. It will be all right," Poppa promised him, and then they were there, in the room, and there were those stupid curtains that Gil vaguely remembered and hated. There was nothing soothing about them when a loved one lie there hurt, Greg was right.

Greg was on his side, and they couldn't see his back. That was for the best, Gil thought, eyeing the IV line and the tube down his throat. He must have inhaled some of the chemicals.

It was the sight of the right side of his face that made Gil's throat lock up, unable to so much as eke out a single noise.

Breath caught, and Gil was momentarily glad that Greg was somewhere where he'd get a lot of attention and care, even if there were sea-vista tropical curtains that circled the area where Greg laid. Too critical for a proper room to himself yet. Too.... too hurt. His Greg was too hurt, his face covered here and there with sterile gauze, and his eye was covered but there was blood and wetness that has seeped through whatever padding they had laid down over it to protect it from the environment.

"God...."

It seemed the only word to begin to express what lay before them, and Gil wasn't surprised when he saw Poppa's shaking hand reach out for a moment.

"We are a mess, aren't we, Gregor?"

The man moved closer, and Gil certainly had to be impressed with that. He couldn't bring himself to do the same. If he got closer, than he would want to touch, to soothe, and if he touched Greg, it wouldn't be any help. The risk of infection alone was maddening, the worry over that eye....

"Aaaa?" Not at all a proper sound, barely a hiss of strangled, tubed breath, but it was something. God, Gil would take anything he could get. "Aaaa. 'oo?"

"Ja, Gregor. Your Poppa is here, and your Gilbert. Quite worrisome, fretful, to see you so. We are rather hoping you won't ever be so hurt again." That was the understatement of the year. "We have faith in you, though. You are strong. Gilbert...." Poppa's hand motioned him forward.

He moved forward, and then he couldn't stop himself from taking Greg's unhurt hand in his. Greg shouldn't even try to make sounds with that tube in his throat, should try to be still and quiet and get better soon, except.... Except that he could die, infection could set in, something could hemorrhage and then he would want to hear that voice more than he ever had before. Gil had to touch, had to stand beside Greg's grandfather and grasp onto him. "Greg? It's Gil. Don't try to talk. You just.... need to rest, and we'll make sure everything is okay."

"Uuuh." The sound was pitiful, but Greg's fingers clenched onto Gil's, holding with a fierce sort of strength that was surprising. In the state he was in, surely that shouldn't be possible, just like those vaguely formed murmurs should be more like grunts.

More like Sleeping OctoGreg.

"Who is Josh?"

Where had that question come from, Gil wondered, head turning blindly towards Greg's Poppa.

"Who is Josh?" Poppa asked him again, gently.

It was such a non sequitur that it threw Gil, tilted his mental state a little. He didn't want to have to look away from Greg, didn't want a single piece of his attention divided. "He...." Was his son? No, not quite, because he hadn't been Gil's flesh and blood, he'd only been a few years in his life, and then.... "He's dead."

Because Gil couldn't quite say who he was, any more than he could say who Greg was or who Gil was.

"Ahhh." That sound of understanding disturbed Gil. "This explains why you whisper to him."

Had he?

"Gregor will not die," Poppa told Gil seriously. "He is much too stubborn, and he is finally in love. He will not die, not if will and want have anything to do with the matter. His will is never to leave you, you know."

Will and Want had very little to do with death, but Gil didn't say that. He looked at Greg again, the redness of his visible face that suggested worse beneath the lines of protective gauze, and ran his thumb over the back of Greg's hand, touch gentle and tight all at once. There wasn't any sense in sitting down, because the nurse would probably be back to kick them out too soon.

It wasn't because Gil thought he might collapse if he actually did more than stand there and look at Greg. " _'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it'._ "

Maybe Lord Byron had that right. Maybe determination would be enough for Greg, whereas Josh hadn't had that. Josh, like Greg, had been a sweet boy, but just that -- a boy, and Greg was a man, and perhaps that made a difference. Maybe it made Greg's want stronger, somehow more real.

Poppa Olaf quoted to Gil, "' _The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't_ '. Gregor will persevere. This is how he is." He didn't have the fear of touching Greg that made Gil tremble, his hand reaching out and brushing flakes of dried blood from that gold-tipped hair. "Aren't you, Gregor? Yes, stay quiet. We will go, but we will come back again soon. We promise."

Henry Ward Beecher coming from the old Norwegian made Gil smile faintly. He didn't want to leave, didn't want to step away from Greg's bed until he was made to leave, didn't want to let go of his hand until then. As long as he kept watching Greg, he'd be all right. As long as he could see the rise and fall of his chest, feel life under his fingers, Greg would be all right.

Superstitious, but he didn't care.

"We don't have to leave yet...."

"You stay," Poppa agreed. "I will have words with the young lady, explain things to her. There will be no trouble. Sit with him, and he will be better for it."

Gil believed him; he believed him because he felt that he had no choice, that he had to believe in Greg's Poppa, or everything would fall to pieces. Gil knew he was in shock, and that he probably should say something about it. Instead, he was going to sit and hold Greg's hand for as long as they'd let him.

"Nnnnnn."

"You're going to be okay, Greg." Sitting helped take some of the shakiness away, and so did leaning forward. Greg smelled like charred meat, and Gil swallowed down bile when he rested his forehead against the back of Greg's hand. He _was_ charred meat, parts of him, and though Gil's gut reaction told him that whatever had happened in the lab had been an accident, he still wanted to strangle someone for their carelessness.

He still wanted to be certain that it hadn't been something Greg had done.

It was more than just unlikely -- it was nearly impossible. He'd watched Greg more than even Greg knew, eyes trained on his motions, wanting to be sure that he wasn't in danger of any sort. Gil's dangers were different than Will's, but no less worrisome. Still present, still drawing attention from the wrong people, a political failure in a job that had too much politics for his taste.

Gil sucked in a shaky breath, and tried to will his heart to slow down so he could concentrate on the feel of Greg's hand under his fingers, middle finger resting over Greg's pulse point. Slow, steady, safe.

Greg was too good at what he did to fuck up.

He had to believe that, and keep on believing it.

He didn't have any other choice.

* * *

Catherine could honestly say that nothing had ever shocked her so much as the realization of who was responsible for the explosion of the lab. Not just the explosion either, but responsible for the injuries to Greg and the loss of his eye. The rest of the office wasn't aware of the full extent of the damages yet. They hadn't gone to see Gil, though, huddled wearily in a chair beside Greg's bed while an elderly man dozed a few feet away.

She hadn't been able to bring herself to say anything to him, and it was obvious that Greg wasn't up to answering any questions. Instead, Catherine had watched them for long minutes, and then walked away quietly.

"Hey." Warrick's voice caught her attention, dragging her back from the land of horrible green and blue dots.

"Hey."

It hadn't been the developer pan, like she'd wanted it to be. It hadn't been Hodges, the smart ass who'd transferred to Vegas with a cloud of rumors chasing him from L.A., even if she'd wanted so badly for it to be him. The evidence said it all, and she wasn't sure what to do other than look up at Warrick.

"Oh, you work fast. Which color charts Hodges' developer pan?"

"Blue." The green was the explosion, but Warrick would be able to tell that, and chances were good that he would know what it was. Warrick had been with her when they had walked in and she had put the green jar under the fume hood.

"That's 180-degree array. That's not the epicenter of the explosion...." She didn't even have to let him draw it out of her, not when she knew what she'd done.

She just flipped the next chart over top of the first one, showing the 360 degree array of green dots. A bagged shard was still on the table. "Yeah. Hodges' pan wasn't the source. It got pushed out by this. High primary frag." Catherine pointed to the green shard and cast Warrick a look that she knew had guilt dripping from every crevice. "I blew up the lab."

He drew in a breath, and in the span of it, Catherine knew that Warrick was playing the moment through his mind where she had put the jar under the fume hood. Then Warrick exhaled, shaking his head. "Gotta call Grissom, and he'll tell Covallo. It was an accident...."

"It was an accident that's cost Greg his eye." His eye, his skin, God knew what else. Catherine hadn't stopped to ask. She hadn't known whom to ask. "Warrick...."

She hadn't cried since Eddie had died.

Then again, she had never considered it possible that she might actually put someone's eye out. It seemed so stupidly impossible, but she had, and maybe worse. Greg had been sleeping and Gil had been there -- and when he wasn't there, he was out of the lab, working the murder of Allison Carpenter with Brass. Roving, avoiding the lab, playing phone tag, and Catherine could guess that he was spending every other waking moment with Greg in the hospital.

Warrick steadied her while she sobbed, making reassuring noises that didn't seep in. Couldn't. She had blown up the lab. She had lost Greg his eye. It might be so much worse, even if it had been a day or three, and the worst was yet unknown.

The worst, accompanied by a man who was probably Greg's dad, who looked so old and so sad, and what if there was a reason, and Gil just couldn't say it? She hadn't stayed for long, and neither had noticed her. Maybe it was worse than his eye. She couldn't just say 'sorry' and make it better, but she couldn't do much more than say she was sorry. God, she needed to keep her job.

And she had to tell Gil. And find him.

"Hey. Hey. It's okay. It's all right. It's not your fault...."

Except it was.

Oh, God. How was she ever going to tell Gil?

It was her fault that Greg had been hurt. She'd never wanted to hurt him, let alone have it echo through other people's lives. She'd just put the evidence under the hood....

"It was just an accident. Hey...." Warrick pulled back a little, his fingers on her face.

"I know. I.... I know." She knew, of course she did, but.... "But it's an accident that's cost more than just money, and...." And Catherine couldn't help a hysterical, tear-wet laugh. "And for God's sake. I just keep hearing my mother in my head, telling me not to run with sharp objects or I'd put someone's eye out, and...."

"Yeah, I can hear my gramma telling me that now." He hugged her gently, one-armed, and used the same arm to pull her back from the table a little. "C'mon. You look like you need to sit down, get something to eat.... then you can do your report. I can call Griss, if you want, and Covallo...."

Except that it was fully her job to lead on it, since she was senior to Warrick. If she backed down, she'd look like she was shirking duty when she'd already done enough wrong.

No. That just wouldn't do. It wasn't right, and she pulled away to rub at her face for a moment, clear her throat. "No. No. I'll make the call. It.... should be me. It's my fault, after all, and that's just how things are. Thanks, anyway, Warrick. I...." She appreciated it. A lot.

"If you need to talk, Catherine...." Warrick's eyes slid down to the table, and then back to her face. "You know where to find me. Right?"

"Yeah. I know where to find you." She could smile, at least a little. Catherine was able to handle the mistakes she made in life. She just wished this wasn't one of them. "Thanks."

His hand lingered, patting gently on her shoulder. "Anything I can do for you...." Warrick trailed off, gave a nod of his head as he turned away to leave Catherine with her burden because there was just too much to do for them all at that moment to spend time in comfort.

God. There was so much to do.

How was she ever going to tell Gil?

* * *

He had no idea what was going on.

It had been a long day, a longer case -- and they were so close. So close. Gil just wanted to go to the hospital and see Greg and sleep, and go on to the next day and the next and make it to another, not have a meeting in Covallo's office. Short, desperate goals, but he'd worked with less before. Poppa Olaf had said something about going to fetch something before Gil got back to the hospital.

The nurse had told Gil that Greg would probably come out of the painkillers enough to be coherent, and that was Gil's hope for the day. That was all. If Catherine had worked out what had happened.... then his other hope was that it hadn't been Greg's fault.

Gil could tell from the look on Catherine's face that whatever the news was, it wouldn't be something he wanted to hear. The temptation to turn around, walk away, just go to the hospital and avoid it altogether, was incredibly strong. He couldn't do that, though; he _had_ to know, had to be sure who was responsible, and he'd have to figure out what to do about that, too.

Gil.

He saw her mouth move, but his ears were awash again. Gil knew he couldn't keep the grimace off of his face at that. He had to concentrate, and keep his eyes on her lips as he settled down into the chair beside hers. He just had to work through it -- with an expression like that, her news couldn't be anything but bad. Maybe sabotage?

"Gil. I'm sorry."

Sorry. Because....

"The primary explosive was evidence that _I_ placed under the fume hood. Someone left the hot plate on, but I should have checked." Catherine took a deep breath. Greg probably would have found that swell of her boobs impressive and looked closer.

 _Looked_. God.

"I'm the one who blew up the lab."

He had to look away, sitting back in the chair. Oh, God. No, no.... he had to close his eyes for the moment, but he could hear it as he blocked sight from his world. Just for a moment, because he couldn't let Covallo see the shock and the horror in his eyes when he said the words he knew he had to say.

"Then it was an accident. Accidents happen in labs...."

"Accidents shouldn't happen in labs," Catherine replied. "They shouldn't. Not accidents like this!"

What could he say to that? He agreed, accidents like that shouldn't happen, not ever, not to anyone, but especially not to Greg. Jesus. And Catherine....

"I should have been paying attention, I shouldn't have been so tired, an...."

And there went sound again. It was getting worse, or maybe he was getting better at blocking out everything around him. For all that he knew, it was the thin line between his sanity and his hearing. He looked at Covallo, and he waited for the man's mouth to move while he strained to make sense out of the sounds that were coming into his ears. Or weren't.

Was he supposed to tell Catherine something reassuring? He wanted to yell, he wanted to berate, but injury didn't get special treatment in the eyes of the way the lab was run, just because he happened to be sleeping with the injured person. It didn't deserve any extra punishment. What happened to Catherine wasn't his decision. It was Covallo's. He couldn't let him fire her.

It was a simple mistake. He could have made it himself.

At least Greg hadn't. Oh, God, at least Greg hadn't been the one who caused the explosion. That would have been too much.

"....teen act....NA. They are all no....royed." He was getting every third word at best. It was getting worse.

"....o you wa....ear? I s....orry."

Gil tipped his head down, desperate for an excuse to bolt out of there. Covallo was staring at Catherine, and Gil could only keep feigning it. "It was an accident, Robert. They happen in a lab."

Thank God the woosh of missing sound faded a little.

"They don't need to happen in _our_ lab," Covallo scowled. "Not only does it make us look bad, but it's also put thirteen cases in jeopardy, and there are going to be questions about a whole lot of others." He turned to look at Catherine. "You're on suspension. Five days unpaid leave."

Fine. Gil could take that, could handle that more than he could handle talking with Catherine about it. He started to stand up, silent after Catherine had stormed out. He'd done his part, been there for her reprimanding, and now he wanted to go home.

And home was wherever Greg was.

"Grissom. We're not done here."

That made him turn around despite himself, brows knitting. They were done. They were definitely done, because Gil should have left the lab nearly an hour ago, and Greg was waiting. Greg might be awake.

"I thought that we were. Your question has been answered, Robert. We know what happened, and it can't be undone." He clutched at the folder of information on the Carpenter case that he'd been carrying around. Maybe it would make a good defensive shield.

"I'm not talking about that, Grissom, and you know it. I want to talk to you about Sanders and the position in which you've placed this lab with your.... propensities."

That hadn't been what he'd been expecting, not the word 'propensities', not that intonation when he and Greg had been living together for a year and making no effort at all to hide it. "Ah, I see." He could smell it, too, the aromatic whiff of politics possibly on the brew. "And what position is that?"

"The position of possibly being sued for sexual harassment. You know it's against all policies to date one of your subor...." There went his hearing again. Gil was almost grateful; there was no point in having this conversation, and certainly not now.

"Robert. Look at me when you talk. I checked those policies personally. I am left open to a sexual harassment suit if Greg ever wanted to file one, but the lab is not. You're in the world of hypotheticals, Robert." He got it all off in a snap, and waited for the man to go on.

Robert knew that the dating subordinates rule was bullshit that didn't exist -- it was merely a caution and a warning of the thoroughly legal consequences if something went wrong with the other party. Maybe it was abuse of power, but Gil wasn't in control of Greg.

Greg hadn't ever been good at listening to orders, even in the lab.

The world was still washing out around him, and Robert seemed reluctant to turn towards him. Gil couldn't see half of what he was saying, and he was more than a little fed up. He needed to get back to the hospital, and waiting for Robert's shift towards him didn't make him any more patient. Gil could finally catch sight of his lips as he moved a little more towards him, though, and it was clearer.

What it amounted to was 'we don't like the direction in which you've allowed this lab to go'.

Gil worked his jaw for a moment, and he knew he was more Will than Gil when he took a step towards the man. He was on the edge of having it, on the edge of telling Covallo to solve Gil's caseload himself. Will was angry, Will was allowed to be angry after every goddamned thing he'd been through in his life, working through it all like a dog, taking it and taking it and taking it. Gil took, took better than Will had, never lashed out, but something had to give.

It was going to end up being Gil's patience. "Elaborate what part of being the second ranked crime lab bothers you, Robert. I'm afraid I'm not following you. Unless you're inviting a discrimination lawsuit, in which case...."

That made Covallo step back, an almost visible retreat. "I'm just saying that you need to be careful for the sake of the lab, Gil. That's all."

It wasn't all, but Gil would let him get away with it.... this time.

"The lab will thrive if you don't strangle it in politics. Have a nice day, Robert." He didn't care what his smile looked like. He was heading to the parking lot, heading to his SUV, heading to his chair beside Greg's bed and Greg's hand and please, just please, his open eye or a sound that wasn't drugged pain. Anything. Anything at all, and that was something to think about, something to cling to on the long drive from the lab to the hospital. Morning traffic was just as bad as always, but Gil was accustomed to it, and it left time to concentrate on other things.

More important things.

There was a case file on his passenger seat, but it wasn't the same company it had used to be for him. He'd gotten used to Greg, or at least knowing that Greg would be home already or getting there after him. He was accustomed to that, or knowing that Greg was with Nick, playing games at Nicky's apartment.

What Gil wouldn't give for it to have all been a nightmare and for Greg to come home from Nicky's after a three day long Halo bender or something. Anything that would've made Greg safe and home and whole. It would've kept Gil from cutting that taxi off to get into the hospital parking lot before it.

He didn't feel sorry about that, much. Especially not when he ended up three floors up on the parking deck, and had to go down to get to the lobby and start the process of finding the four different elevators needed to get to Greg's room. Gil was sure that whoever had designed the hospital was a sadist at heart.

It didn't give anxious loved ones a peaceful walk in which to contemplate the state of existence. It made Gil more tired than he was already, made his feet drag and his concentration blur as he passed the now familiar nursing desk. Down towards the end of the ward was Greg, and a small private room, a chair with his name on it, and a hand that belonged in his.

Even if Greg wasn't ever supposed to have been in a hospital that way, Gil was going to do everything Greg had done for him. He was going to stay, and hold Greg's hand, and make sure that.... Well, that nothing happened to him. That he would be all right. It was highly unlikely that serial killers would be coming to visit Greg, but still.

Still. Greg would be glad for it later, and would smile. Gil had to have faith that he would smile again, no matter what he was afraid of at the moment.

The nurse on duty at the desk when he stepped out of the elevator nodded at him. They all knew Gil by now, and they let him come and go as needed. "He had a good night," she said to him, strawberry curls dancing around her face with a fascinating little wiggle. It made him want to pull them, for some strange reason. "And there were flower deliveries just a while ago."

"That's very good to hear, thank you." He could guess where those were from -- the department, maybe. Covallo was likely, after Gil had snapped at him like that. He'd certainly be walking around on eggshells near Gil for a couple of weeks, which was fine. In a couple of weeks, maybe Greg could be back at work.

He didn't bother to ask the nurse if Greg was awake, because he'd find out for himself in a moment. It was easier to turn down the hallway, walking with determination in his every step. Gil couldn't let his mind wander for once, because it kept slipping off to dark places and angry thoughts.

Catherine had blown up the lab.

It had been running around the inside of his skull since she had said it, desperately shoved back every time it came to the front. Catherine had blown up the lab, cost Greg his eye, made it so that he'd suffer skin grafts and weeks of agony. Gil could only be grateful that Greg was supremely confident in his charms, and that Greg knew Gil adored him.

He did know. Gil was sure he did. Just in case, he'd have to make it clearer than ever. People went doubtful and depressed when they were in a hospital, no matter what kind of company was with them.

Gil _did_ adore Greg. It didn't matter what happened to him, that wasn't going to change -- Gil didn't let people insinuate themselves into his life without keeping them there. Even Catherine, who'd.... No, he wasn't going to think. He was going to depress the door handle, and push open the door, peering at Greg through the narrow window before the door gave way to the room itself.

"Hi." Greg's voice was hoarse, drained, but that was no surprise. They'd taken the tube out, and that was a good sign, too. "Was wondering where everybody was."

Gil found it surprisingly easy to close the door behind him and walk towards Greg, talking like nothing had happened, like he hadn't been worried out of his mind. "Covallo called for a meeting this morning -- and I believe your Poppa went out to get you a surprise."

The chair wasn't particularly comfortable, but it was already sitting close beside Greg's bed, and Gil was used to it, the thin metal arms and flat cushion. He reached for Greg's hand like a lifeline, and dredged up a smile. "The nurse told me that you had a good night."

"Yeah. Kind of. Tired," Greg murmured, sighing when Gil's fingers touched his. It was obvious that was a great comfort. "Head hurts. Eye hurts. Back hurts. They won't tell me anything much so I guess it's kinda bad." His good eye opened to peek at Gil. "And I hate sleeping alone."

Gil's smile took on a little more reality as he looked back at Greg. "I'll stop by the house and bring you something to sleep with next time I'm out. You.... you're going to be okay, Greg. They had to do some skin grafts, and...." And skin grafts were serious.

Why did he have to be the one to tell Greg about his eye? What kind of doctors did they have in that place?

"You don't have to tell me." Greg's thumb stroked the web of skin between Gil's thumb and forefinger. "I mean, I figure I already know, more or less, right? I was turned too far towards the hood, and something probably hit my face, or maybe the glass when I went through the wall...." He was pretty coherent for a guy who was doped up to the gills, Gil decided. "Hey, you know, when I was first waking up? This nurse came in and said something about people staying here and blah blah blah?" Greg gave him a brave smile, one that had to hurt his face. "I think I gave her the finger."

God, that was good to hear. Gil scooted the chair closer, and rubbed his thumb gentle at the center of Greg's palm. "We've been trying hard not to get in the way. Someone had flowers delivered, but I think they must've gone out of their way to put them on the table behind you." He'd move them in a minute or two.

It was so good to hear Greg, to see his face animated and alive, that Gil didn't want to move. "What happened in the lab wasn't your fault."

Gil hadn't realized how much tension one sick body could hold until Greg went limp on the bed, giving a whimper that was nearly inaudible. "Oh, Jesus. Thank God. I thought...." Of course. Of course he had been worried about that, probably even before he came to full wakefulness again. "I'm glad."

"I knew it wasn't you. A piece of un-logged evidence was put under the fume hood, there was an active heat source beside it...." Gil leaned forward when Greg went limp, and kept his fingers moving because it was all that he could think to do. Just a little contact when he wanted to kiss Greg, when he wanted to see what the other half of Greg's face looked like so he could honestly tell Greg it didn't bother him.

It didn't. It wouldn't. Not ever.

"I'm so glad it wasn't me." The shaky way that Greg clutched at him made Gil want to gather him close, but knowing that he couldn't touch him, that there had been time spent in an oxygenated room and a skin graft that would probably take at least a week before it was well enough to leave the hospital, stopped him. "I'm so glad."

Covallo had thought that maybe Greg had done it because Greg had a reputation for playing, but playing and making a mistake were neither mutually exclusive nor proven to have a relationship. There was no causal link except that Covallo would have fired Greg for making that mistake, while Catherine had gotten five days unpaid suspension.

Gil managed another smile, peering at Greg's one visible brown eye. "Does it help any, knowing that?"

"Lots." Greg's smile turned sleepy. "Hey. Can you bring me my black death?" Never mind that he had already sort of asked about it, said he was lonely sleeping by himself. Gil didn't expect him to be coherent. "It's kinda lonely in here without you, you know. I've even been dreaming Poppa was.... wait. Did you say Poppa was here?"

"I did," Gil agreed. He could feel himself warming at that sleepy smile, the same way he'd warmed a week ago when he'd come home over a week ago to find Greg drooling on the pillow. "He's been here as much as I've been."

"He wasn't supp...."

Gil felt the jerk of tension rising again, the way that Greg suddenly shook with the force of it, the sudden stop of that word.

"Mom."

Gil had to turn his head a little to look to see what Greg could see, peering out of the corner of his eye to look down towards the door. There was Poppa Olaf, with a cup of airport coffee in hand, and a woman with dirty blond hair, neat to her shoulders, curled under slightly. She struck him as a very professional looking woman, somewhere in her mid-forties.

"Greg...? Poppa Olaf didn't tell me you were awake...." She moved into the room, and Gil leaned back, unsure exactly what to do. She was eyeing him like he didn't belong in the chair beside Greg's bed. "Or that you had a friend here."

"Gregor was still sleeping when I left to fetch you, Audun," Poppa declared, moving towards the couch. "Gilbert, remain where you are. It will do Gregor more good to have you there."

"Gil's always with me," Greg said a little blearily. "Has been for a year. I called you and Gunnar to let you know, but you never called back. Busy, I guess."

Audun. And Gunnar -- Greg's father, but he called him Gunnar, which was unthinkable. Gil's mom had never been anything but mom, or his mother, or something along those lines, but never her first name. Josh had called him Will, but only because he wasn't his real father. Every family did what worked on the basis of their circumstances, and nothing was outside of the realm of the possible.

It didn't stop Greg's mother from staring at Gil for a moment. "Did you leave a message, sweetie? Maybe the machine ate it? I...." She didn't want to even face that fact, moving to look beside the chair Gil sat in. "Oh, God, Greg."

"'m okay." He wasn't, and Gil knew it, but he didn't correct him. "Gil's been with me, and Poppa, so. I'm okay."

Okay, but Greg didn't volunteer any more information to his mother. He didn't tell her that he had moved, that he lived with Gil, nothing. That was information Poppa Olaf already knew, and that his mother should have, but didn't. She didn't know, and Greg's good eye was closing.

"Tired," he sighed, clinging more tightly to Gil's hand. "Want my plague."

"Your mother and I will go to fetch it, Gregor," Poppa promised him. "Gilbert will stay here with you, where he belongs."

He couldn't disagree with Poppa Olaf on that, and concentrated on massaging the palm of Greg's hand with an absent thumb. "You have the key...?" Of course he had the key, but Gil still didn't want anyone rummaging through the house looking for something. "It's on top of the pillows."

Audun was staring a little, and then her eyes dropped to Greg's face again. "We'll be back, Greg, and then.... you can catch me up on everything I missed?"

"Mhm," Greg agreed, but he was nearly sleeping again, only his grip on Gil not faltering.

"We shall stay a while, Audun. I know you do not see him as often as you would like," Poppa declared, expression softening visibly. Gil was going to have to ask Poppa some questions, things that Greg hadn't told him. He just wasn't sure how to start. His brain wanted to treat it like a case but he couldn't because it wasn't, and there was a case that he was supposed to be working on.

Gil wanted to laugh when his brain kicked on finally, and he twisted a little. "Mrs. Sanders? I'm sorry, I should've introduced myself sooner. I'm Gil Grissom. I work with Greg." Slept with him, lived with him, experienced simple happiness with him.

She managed a tight smile and didn't quite offer him a hand. That was fine, because he was holding Greg's, and he wasn't going to let loose of those fingers to take anyone else's.

"Audun, we will call the nurse if you would like to learn more clearly the issues at stake here," Poppa offered. "Gregor would be glad for you to know."

Greg would be glad for her to know because Greg was like that, Gil knew. He didn't hold grudges against anyone, just accepted some of the strangest things for fact and nodded before going back to his own business. It was probably half the reason why Greg put up with Gil as well as he did. Gil could and would do the same, tilted his head a little to look at Greg's mother and said, "He'll appreciate your being here when he wakes up, Mrs. Sanders."

"He's probably still very tired. Do you know.... what happened? My father told me that there was an accident...."

"I'll explain it to you," Gil assured. He wasn't sure how; after all, laying the blame at Catherine's feet made him feel bad for her, but letting Greg's mother know it wasn't his fault was also important.

"Do they know, yet? The cause?" Poppa asked.

"The investigation into what happened was closed this morning. One of my CSIs put a piece of unlogged evidence under the fume hood. There was a heat source on, and.... it was simply an accident. It wasn't Greg's fault. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time." It just happened to be his office, his workspace. It made Gil ache to think that it could, had happened, but.... he wouldn't have to explain it again. Poppa Olaf and Greg's mother had heard the explanation. Maybe he wouldn't have to say it again, wouldn't have to think about Catherine's mistake for a while.

"He's always been so careless about things like that," Audun said suddenly, wringing her hands. "I'd come home, and he'd have left the stove on, and...."

"Your mother left the stove on," Poppa said in a way that left no leeway for questions. "All the time, and only the oven. Gregor often went behind her to make sure that these things were done, turned off or put away. Do not blame that boy!"

"Greg processes DNA -- he wasn't the person using the heat source. It's an open lab, Mrs. Sanders, and a lot of other people use parts of his workspace." Gil turned his head away, looking at Greg's face. It was hard to tell if he was actually asleep or feigning it. Greg was good at pretending to sleep, and his hand was still so tight on Gil's fingers. "He didn't make any mistakes."

"Gregor would not," Poppa said, and there was a heavy finality in that, one that Gil recognized even more than Greg's mother likely did. His own mother had more than once had that tone, held it in the snap of her fingers.

If Audun said anything else, it was buried in the wash of sound that slid through his ears, emptying the world of everything but Gil and Greg.

He couldn't quite bring himself to care, while he sat close to Greg, holding his hand and watching his face. If they were talking to him, he missed it and the tight strain of trying to hear them was something Gil didn't bother with. If they needed his attention, they could shake him out of it, and until then, he was content to stay where he was, watching Greg.

It was both the least and the most he could do.

* * *

Being brave about something terrible she had done was perhaps one of the single most difficult things Catherine had done in her life. Shame was generally foreign to her; she had long since abandoned that emotion as one that only brought her grief and made her unhappy. It wasn't much good to anyone, but it didn't stop her from feeling a deep-seated shame that she was responsible for the loss of Greg's eye.

An eye, and all of Greg's other injuries, were apparently worth about five days worth of her pay. That was it, and Gil, God. Gil had defended her despite what she'd done, and somehow it was more shameful because he was standing up for her. Covallo could've fired her for botching so many cases in one fell swoop and for doing that to one of the techs in the lab.

She didn't know how she could face Greg again, or Gil. She just knew that she had to, because she was their friend, and she owed that to both of them.

Catherine took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, heading into the hospital with a firm resolution. She was going to see them. She was going to apologize, and she was going to do her best to help both of them however they might need her.

They probably didn't need her at all, because the two of them were pretty self-sustaining. Greg had kept the fallout of 'Will' pretty quiet in the office. If it hadn't been for Agent Crawford storming around and then eventually leaving with Sara, it would've felt like a bad dream to her; an unbelievable dream, because Gil had returned so quickly from that half-person to being just Gil, albeit a new and somewhat improved and happier Gil. Gil who now occasionally dragged Greg along when she and Jim and sometimes Al went out for drinks, Gil who Nick saw more of because he showed up to play designated driver at the end of whatever mischief Nick, Warrick and Greg had gotten into.

Post-Millander Gil was different than the one that had been around before, but it was definitely a change for the better. No one saw burnout in people until they shook it off and recaptured their love of work, and that had been the difference. Gil had been excited about everything (except paperwork) most of the time, more full of quips and laughs than ever before.

God, if the shame didn't crush her, the guilt might. She was going to have to apologize to Greg's dad, too, and....

"Oh, I'm sorry -- I wasn't watching where I was going."

"Of course. That's understandable." There was something about the woman she'd nearly knocked over, whether it was the shape of her eyes or the mole on her right cheek, Catherine couldn't say. "After all, people visiting hospitals usually aren't very together."

She'd just come from the hallway that the cafeteria was down -- probably taking a breather from visiting her loved ones, and headed for the same elevator that Catherine was. "I'm still sorry. It's just.... exactly what you said," she half-laughed. There was something to her face that was familiar, made Catherine want to guess at some relation to Greg. An aunt or a sister. "Unless you're going up to the maternity ward, there isn't usually a cheery reason to visit."

The way that she smiled had a different edge than any Catherine ever recalled Greg having. "I suppose. I'm sorry we bumped into one another, then. The elevators are off in that direction -- it'll get you at least to the third and fourth floors. I have no idea how to get to the second, but there's an elevator on the third that goes to fifth and sixth, and one on the fourth that goes to sixth and seventh. Or perhaps it's second, and I just haven't quite noticed."

Usually it was just in and out to the emergency room, so Catherine felt a little overwhelmed, again. She remembered having to ride elevators up and down, but hadn't figured out how she'd done it that last time to get there.

"I just wish there were signs that said what unit you were nearest. Are you...?"

"Going to the fifth floor." That was something, since Catherine planned to go to that floor herself. At least she could walk with the other woman, or follow behind her, to find her way up the elevator system.

She was either some relation to Greg, or there was some incredible coincidence. Catherine smiled, turning towards the elevator with the woman. "I have a friend up there myself that I wanted to visit."

"Oh." The woman wasn't very friendly, so it made Catherine wonder. Of course, stress did strange things to people. "Then I suppose we can walk together."

Catherine still smiled at her, fell into step with her casually. People were puzzles, and indulging her natural curiosity was a way of distracting herself from the stomach-twisting anticipation. "I'd appreciate that. I'm trying to think of a way to apologize to him, because I'm partially responsible for him being here."

"Really? I can't imagine how that might have happened. I don't suppose it's something simple...." The woman trailed into silence. "I'm Audun. By the way. My son is on the fifth floor."

"I'm Catherine Willows," she smiled, offering her hand to Audun. It sounded decidedly ethnic, though it didn't spring out to Catherine's ears as Norwegian the way something else might. "Could.... I'm going to go out on a limb here. Are you Greg's mother?" She looked young, given the age of Greg's father, but odder things happened.

"Yes. I'm his mother." Audun didn't reach out, and didn't take Catherine's hand. "It's Greg you're going to see, and you're the reason he's here."

Catherine paused to press the up button, and then stepped back to look at Audun. "That's.... what my findings were," she agreed softly. "I'm sorry."

"Mmm." For a moment, she thought that the other woman wouldn't say anything, but then she went on. "Greg is just glad he isn't the one responsible, so I'm grateful. In a way. Not so grateful as my father, of course. He's the one who raised him, and I think it would have broken his heart if.... Well."

"A lot of us at the lab would have a broken heart if.... That had happened. Greg's almost our mascot, and he's a good worker, and...." She'd seen a lot of him outside of work in the past year, and he was a great and fascinating person. A little goofy at times, but that was part of the charm. Catherine wasn't sure what to say to that end because there was no telling if he'd told his mother about Gil, or if Gil was up there playing the overly concerned boss or who knew what.

"And he's sleeping with his superior, so you're obliged to say that sort of thing. Aren't you?"

Greg's mother, Catherine decided, wasn't anything at all like Greg. She liked Greg, and she decided on a snap judgment that she didn't like his mom. When the elevator doors opened, she briefly entertained waiting for another one, but it wouldn't delay things since she was heading up to see Greg no matter what. "It's not like that."

"I have to say, it's a spectacularly stupid -- or smart, I can't tell yet, he hasn't been awake enough -- move on his part. It really.... wasn't at all what any of us expected from him."

Catherine would have liked to give her the benefit of the doubt. She just couldn't. Maybe, maybe, it was stress and shock talking. She saw enough of that on any given day, but it still made her a little reluctant to enter the elevator with Audun. Catherine decided to let the professional-looking woman enter the elevator before her, and followed close behind.

"I-- Audun, your son is not trying to sleep his way to the top. Believe me."

"I.... I shouldn't be saying these things." That was the first truth to come out of the woman's mouth. "I'm just so tired, and.... I haven't seen him in years, not since he moved to New York, and...."

"He grew up when you weren't looking," Catherine suggested softly. "I'm sorry you have to see him like this, but I know that your son and Gil are very.... good for each other. They've been living together for a while. It's no secret at the department."

"Mm, no. Greg.... doesn't much keep secrets." Who would have thought that Greg's mother would be anything other than happy, smiling, the sort of woman who ruffled her kid's hair when he came home and didn't mind if he smeared whatever he ate all over himself? It was obvious that this woman wasn't like that at all, and that was something of a surprise.

A lot of a surprise.

So, the old man was Greg's grandfather. The illustrious Poppa Olaf, of the many dirty and colorful stories that Greg liked to tell. That made a little more sense -- she remembered when Gil had talked about Poppa Olaf coming to visit them, and the cotton candy machine incident at one of the little carnivals that rolled through. Greg's grandfather saw a lot more of him than his own mother, which Catherine couldn't viscerally understand.

"It's not something that should be a secret. We're all.... comfortable."

"It's good that he has friends." Catherine shuddered faintly. She could feel the prick of those words, the underlying censure. Maybe that was her own guilt, and not Greg's mother, no matter how distant and strange she seemed.

After all, friends didn't blow up friends in lab accidents. "Mmm. I take it that you've met Gil?"

"The older gentleman, sitting by Greg's bed. Yes. I've met him. Greg said that he called a year ago, to tell me, but.... I didn't get the call. Voicemail must have eaten it, I suppose."

Voicemail, the excuse for the busy people of the world. Catherine barely managed a smile when the elevator stopped short of the floor they wanted. "They bought a house. People tend to get excited about things like that."

"Greg's always lived in these terrible little apartments. His grandfather used to complain terribly about the way that he kept them. Everything always such a mess, plants on the verge of dying...." Audun took a deep breath. "I'm not sure where he gets that from. Must be his father's side of the family."

Catherine hung back, and let her step out into the hallway first, and then she followed. "You'd feel proud of him now. You can see the floors in their place. I'm not sure why, either. Gil's townhouse used to look like a clutter bomb went off."

"Things change when there are two of you, and then they change again when there are three." It was impossible to argue with that. Lindsey had made a huge difference in married life, but Lindsey was a difference that Catherine would never give up. Not to her mother, not to her father, not to anyone. She couldn't imagine it.

Lindsey had been the reason why she'd stayed with Eddie as long as she had. "I'm sure that Greg had to have been a handful when he was little," Catherine ventured. "My daughter is always getting into something." Trouble or just a mess, but she'd never pass her off to anyone.

"We were so young, and his father was working so hard. I was in school all the time.... Mostly," Audun said as they stopped to wait for the next elevator, "he spent his time with his grandparents. He nearly lived there. Weekends, school breaks. Most week nights."

Catherine nodded a little as she looked over at Audun. "He turned out to be a good kid."

"We're moderately proud of him, yes. I do wish he'd gone on to med school...." There was the next elevator, the one that would go up to fifth floor. "....but boys will do what boys will do."

"Whatever the hell they want?" Catherine offered wryly. "He loves his job, sometimes a little too much. Playing guess that chemical compound can be a little tiring after a ten hour shift."

"Hmm." Finally, a smile. That was obviously something with which Audun was familiar. "He used to drive Gunnar crazy with that game. My husband would be in a snit for days if Greg made him play."

Catherine finally smiled a little more, a real smile. Maybe if she could get Audun to talk more about her son, tell him what he was like now she could better understand him. Maybe that was something else she could do. "You mean he's always done that?"

"Since he was seven or so," Audun nodded. "He had this obsession with science. I made the mistake of giving him one of those little chemistry sets, you know the ones? I was in my second year of med school and he just kept asking all of these questions, so I thought, fine, let's show him something about it, a little, anyway, and... that was all it took. But I was so busy, and Gunnar worked so hard...."

She was rationalizing, and Catherine could understand. She'd just done it herself -- insanely long days, and trying to juggle sleep and her daughter now that Eddie was dead. It was hard. "I'm glad you did," Catherine smiled faintly, the sides of her mouth hurting a little. "He's really a natural."

"He's still missing an eye now."

That hit Catherine like a wall as the elevator doors dinged and opened in front of them, drew a sharp pain into her sinuses. It took her a couple of breaths to gather up a response. "I know, but.... he'll have help."

"You don't think they'll fire him? He can't look into microscopes with only one good eye." Audun looked at her. There was worker's comp insurance paid out for a reason. "I just.... I wish he had never come here. Gone to New York. I don't know why he couldn't have stayed in San Francisco...."

"Kids want to make their mark in the world," Catherine offered softly. It wasn't as if he would have spent more time with his parents if he'd stayed in San Francisco or San Gabriel. "And he has. He won't lose his job, I know he won't."

"I don't know what his father would say if he had to come home...."

That was the crux of it, was it? Not wanting to take Greg in because he might interrupt their lives. Gil wouldn't let that happen, wouldn't want him going home with those people, and Catherine was going to make sure that he knew that Greg's parents weren't anything like the infamous Poppa Olaf if he hadn't already guessed it himself.

"He.... does have Gil, Audun. If.... it did come to that, I don't think you should worry about what Greg will do." Where there was a will, there was a way.

Where there was a Gil....

"So you think it's that serious, then?"

Please, fifth floor, please. Hurry. If Catherine could have physically lifted the elevator to get it there faster, she might have tried it.

The odd incredulous edge to Audun's voice was what got her, and maybe the woman had some right to doubt what Catherine had said. After all, it was only because she knew Gil that there wasn't a doubt in her mind that he was head over heels in love, the way that only a chemistry nerd and a bugman could be.

"I know that it is." The ding was almost a relief, except for the knowledge that they were heading to the same place.

"Oh."

What on earth else should the woman have thought? Gil was in the hospital room with her _son_. Surely that alone ought to have told her that it was not only serious, but not the sort of relationship lightly laid aside in the face of disaster. Catherine looked at Greg's mother from the corner of her eye as she started down the hallway that would take them past the nurses' desk and then eventually to Greg's room. "Did you think they weren't?"

"It isn't as if I had any way of knowing. Are you always so nosy?" The bitterness in that was palpable, and nothing at all like Greg. It made Catherine deeply curious about the rest of Greg's family.

"It goes with the job." Catherine could smile in the face of bitterness, just like she smiled back when shaking her ass was a living. "I'd just noticed that you'd assumed the worst."

"Assuming the worst with Greg has almost always been the correct assumption."

Catherine could never believe that, would never believe it. "Room 512, isn't it? Just around the corner?"

"Oh. Yes," Audun said faintly, reaching up and touching the hollow of her throat as if pulling herself together.

Maybe a good hit there might put some sense into her, but touching there wasn't going to do enough to bring Audun down to earth. "So, has he been awake much?"

"Some. Very little, actually." Although Catherine was almost sure that she could hear Greg's voice, and maybe laughter. Yes. Definitely Greg, and Gil, though she knew Gil wouldn't be the one laughing. "He's in a great deal of pain."

"He'll get better," Catherine insisted softly, pausing in the hallway for a moment to peer into the room before she stepped in with her apologies.

It was good to see Greg, and better to see him smiling. She could see the strain of it, could see the way his face dimmed when she walked into the room.... or, no. Greg's mother was behind her.

"Hi," he greeted, keeping the smile in place, no matter how plastic it became. One arm firmly clutched a large black stuffed toy in a death grip. "Long time no see, huh?"

"Way too long," Catherine smiled as she stepped towards Greg. Gil caught sight of Greg's movement, and turned to smile at her. He was good at faking it, but it hurt to watch him feign that he was completely aware of his surroundings. It was hard to see his smile falter a fraction.

"Catherine, I didn't expect to see you here today...." Or hear her, apparently. She turned her eyes to peer at Greg, but didn't turn her head.

"I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Greg? How're you feeling? Your mother was telling me that you've been pretty tired."

"Yeah. Well." It was obvious that he wanted to shrug, but wasn't comfortable enough to actually do so. "It's not so bad. I've got Gil and Poppa and I've got the Black Death, so...." His eyes widened slightly. "Plus, my mom's here, and that's always nice, right?"

"I.... think I need some air," Audun announced, shaking her head slightly.

"Didn't...." Catherine turned a little, staring at Greg's mother.

"But you just got back." Gil still had a grip on Greg's fingers, and turned a little to address Audun.

"There are so many people in the room," she excused, stepping towards the door. An older man, obviously Greg's Poppa, was dozing on a small couch across from Greg's bed. It didn't seem like a lot of people to Catherine.

"It's okay," Greg murmured, the sound sleepy. "Why don't you go back to the hotel and get some rest? It's been a long trip, and I know you'll have to go back in a day or so. I'm just going to fall asleep again soon, anyway."

Greg was giving her an out, and to Catherine's surprise, she took it. "I'll be back later tonight." Probably when Gil wasn't there, Catherine guessed, and maybe when Poppa Olaf wasn't there, either. After all, Gil had to be to work in a few hours, but he didn't look like he'd been somewhere to rest.

"Be good, okay, Greg?"

"I'll be good," he promised, and it made Catherine's teeth grind together. What kind of promise was that, anyway? Greg was never _bad_ , and he was hurt, in the hospital. If they weren't in Greg's hospital room, Catherine wouldn't be able to keep herself from decking her.

"Okay -- I'll see you later...." Audun glanced at him, at Gil, and then over to Greg's Poppa, before she turned to leave.

The moment the door closed behind her, Gil let out an explosive sigh, and dropped his head to rest against the edge of Greg's bed. "I'm going to end up saying something horrible, Greg...."

"Okay." Greg's smile turned tired, but he relaxed, and that was something. "If you want. She'll be gone Sunday morning, and that's only a little while longer to put up with her, right? She.... she has a hard time. Relating to other people, I guess. Kind of. It's not in her nature. Mostly, she deals with geriatrics, so she's never quite known what to do with me. It's okay. 's why I've got Poppa."

"I'll have to say hi when he wakes up," Catherine said softly, smiling a little as she moved towards the head of Greg's bed and Gil's chair. "Since I've heard so much about him from both of you. Is there anything I can do for you?" Remove that fake smile that probably popped up every time he saw his mother?

Greg rolled his eyes up and gave a little smile. It was a real one, thank God. "Mmm, well, you could talk them into letting me have something better than that stuff they call food. If you could sneak me in one of those big, fat hamburgers from the place across the street and some real coffee...."

"Sneak in, huh? I'll have to throw a jacket over my arm and pretend I'm carrying handcuffs." She smiled at him, struck by the mental image of Greg having to tear off pieces of burger to eat them. "What kind of coffee? Real coffee or fluffy coffee?"

Catherine leaned on the edge of the bed then, just a little, and brushed slightly against Gil. He startled like he'd been shot, and jerked upright. It drew Greg's eye to him sharply, almost as if he needed to be watched carefully, and that reinforced what she had told to Greg's mother.

Greg wouldn't be going home.

"Any coffee, so long as it's good coffee," Greg murmured, distracted. It was hard not to be, because even Catherine had to stare a little at Gil, who clearly saw them both staring back, except he didn't say anything for too long.

When he did, it was just, "Sorry. I must have fallen asleep."

Little lie, big lie. Catherine nodded a little, and darted eyes over to Greg. "That's okay. I think I've been volunteered for a coffee and burger run. Do you want anything, Gil, and should I bring anything for your poppa, Greg?"

"If they have a patty melt, Poppa loves them. Isoäiti won't let him have them anymore because of his cholesterol, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her." He continued to eye Gil. "And if your cholesterol ever does that dance, there'll be no more patty melts for you, either. Poppa's only getting one 'cause he's on vacation. Technically."

Gil smiled a little and sat back, still holding Greg's hand. Catherine was willing to bet that with the faint little motions Gil kept making, Greg's hand was probably well-massaged by now. "The same goes for you, Greg. I'll just have a burger, and whatever coffee."

"Two whatever coffees, two burger things, and one patty melt, if I can find one," Catherine repeated, smiling a little as she shifted in her heels. "Are you going to sleep before you go back to the lab, Gil, or are you going to pass out on the drive to work?"

"Only if I can sideswipe Ecklie."

"He's going to go home and sleep," Greg insisted. "Poppa's here, and if I know him, he'll stay right where he is until Mom goes back to San Gabriel. You need to get some rest, and you missed your doctor's appointment. I know you did. I don't even have to ask."

Catherine could watch a little guilt skitter over Gil's face. "I was a little.... busy," Gil said. A little busy because Greg had been blown up in an accident that was her fault. "I'll reschedule." She could guess the 'eventually' that he didn't say.

"I'll, uh, leave you two to talk. I'll be back with food." Catherine took a back step.

"Hey, Catherine?" Greg's open eye rolled towards her, seeming sly. "Think you can manage some onion rings?"

"Somehow, I just don't think I'll be able to balance all of that."

"You'll still try," Gil smirked a little. He still looked tired, still faintly angry at her in the back of his eyes. "We both know it."

"And ketchup," Greg added, but he looked as if he might drift off in the meantime. Maybe he really was that tired. Probably he was.

"Got it. I'll be back in a few."

Catherine guessed that, though she was leaving a room with one sleeping man and two questionably awake men, she'd come back to find three sleeping men and no sign of Greg's mother.

There were worse things in the world.

* * *

Greg hurt.

Greg hurt a lot. He was cold, his back and his neck were killing him, his right cheek ached, and his right eye.... So much for perfect 20/20 vision. Right now, though, there were other things to worry about, other things to take his mind off of himself, which seemed extraordinarily important, all things considered.

"I want you to call your doctor. Now. Right now."

He knew Gil had heard that properly, because his eyebrows furrowed faintly, and his mouth parted a little and then closed. Whatever protest Gil was going to try to throw at him was probably one that Gil knew wouldn't work.

"Greg, I can't take a week right now to be completely.... nonfunctional."

"You didn't hear Catherine come in," Greg said softly. "And it's getting worse. Fast. I want you to take the time. 'm gonna be okay." It was a lie, and Greg knew it was a lie, but he couldn't afford the truth right at that moment. The truth was, he needed Gil. He needed every spare second Gil had, and he didn't want to let go of Gil's hand.

That wasn't what Gil needed, though. Gil needed to get better, because what the hell would they do if Gil went completely deaf? He could learn sign, or.... or, something. He didn't want Gil to have that happen because Greg needed him there very badly.

"No, you're not. You're hurt and someone needs to be here with you...." Which was Gil, while juggling work, and whatever was going on with Catherine, and going steadily more deaf, and.

Life had a way of shitting on them when it wanted to.

"Poppa will stay long enough for you to make the appointment, and, hey. If we're lucky, they'll let you stay in here with me for that week. Come on." Greg tightened his grasp on Gil's hand. "If I'm gonna be half-blind, there's no way you can be all deaf."

It was meant as a joke, but it didn't come out very well. Gil still smiled at him, tilted his head down for a moment before he looked at Greg's face. No shying away, even when the nurses changed his dressings. Greg knew that he had to look like shit, but it never even mattered for a fraction of a second to Gil.

Then again, Gil loved his creepy crawlies, too. "If they do this, I won't be able to hear much of anything for a week. It's outpatient, so...." So, he wouldn't be in a hospital room, let alone sharing one with Greg more than he already had.

"So? That's why there's a fold-out bed. That's why we've got a Scrabble game. That's why we've got pens and paper. You can't hear, I can half-see, it'll be fine." It hurt to reach out, to reach higher, and Greg figured he could explain away the sharp pang in his sinuses by attributing it to the pain. "But you've gotta get it done. Please."

Sometimes, it was easy to manipulate Gil. Freakishly easy, and Greg was glad he was the only person who usually ever did it. It was a lot like talking Gil into seeing that sleep specialist person. All he had to do was mean what he was saying and touch the side of Gil's face, and Gil gave in.

"Okay. I'll.... call about it."

"Now?" Prompting, yes, manipulating, yes, but if he didn't take care of Gil, who would? Greg had long ago learned that some people needed looking after more than others, and Gil was definitely someone who needed another person to pay attention to his needs. Left on his own, Gil would ignore them until they were so bad nothing could be done, and Greg was afraid that was going to be the case with his hearing.

Gil smiled at him. "I'll have to shake Poppa Olaf down to get my cell phone back, so if you mean immediately now...."

"If he's gonna get a patty melt out of it? I promise he won't care." Greg gave a sigh and settled his head down against the pillow, closing his eye. "Go ahead. I promise I won't even complain, and after you've eaten, you need to get some rest. Real rest."

He could hear Gil sigh, and then felt him lean forward a little like he wanted to kiss Greg. He didn't, probably because there was so much logic going through Gil's head about hospital procedure and infections and who knew what else. "I promise." Lips brushed the back of his hand, and then Greg could hear Gil standing up, moving around the room. "Do you want the flowers moved so you can look at them?"

"Mhm." Greg snuggled down into his bed as best he could. "Hey, we never looked at any of the cards, did we? Mom showed up, and everything was just kind of a mess, so...."

"You don't react well to her," Gil noted. He was behind Greg now, digging through the flowers. Gil was stalling on getting to his cell phone -- probably mentally walking himself through what he'd say and how he'd say it and how he'd file for the time off. He came around to Greg's side of the bed, and put them down on the table, glass clinking on the tabletop. "Two bouquets addressed to you, two separate cards. The lilies are.... huh, from Molly."

"She likes me," Greg declared, just a little smug. He couldn't help it. After all, he'd managed to reopen lines of communication that had been shut off a long time ago, and that was good for Gil. Mostly good, he figured, since he wasn't so sure about Jack or Hannibal.

Especially Jack.

That was pretty fucked up if he thought about it, while he settled in better with his stuffed black plague. It smelled like Gil or Poppa Olaf had tossed it in the washer before bringing it back to him. Springtime fresh black death. That was kind of what Hannibal smelled like when compared to Jack. Given a choice between the two.... Greg would rather run and hide, but at least Hannibal was a ghost.

"And the roses...." Gil trained off. "Do you want to look at the card before I destroy it?"

Speak of the devil. The only question was.... which one?

"Why don't you read it to me?" Greg asked, curiosity biting deep. It was bound to be one or the other. Greg knew where he'd lay his bet.

Gil cleared his throat as he walked towards Greg, almost pacing. " _'A little bird told me that you were feeling under the weather. Take time and get better, for I feel that you would be tenderly missed -- H.'_ "

"He totally creeps me out," Greg announced, opening his eye to peek up at Gil. He had to turn his neck a little, and that made him whimper despite himself. "Ow."

"He creeps me out, too," Gil agreed softly, while he pocketed the card. He probably didn't want Greg to see it, because he didn't want to unsettle Greg any worse than he already was. "Don't move too much. I'm going to rifle your grandfather's pockets for my cell phone, and then I'll make that call and.... Everything is going to be okay."

Like Greg hadn't received a bouquet of Get Well roses from a serial killer. He supposed there were worse things to get from a serial killer. Say.... a personalized set of razor sharp kitchen knives, or somebody's head in a box or something.

"Yeah. Just.... I want you to take care of yourself." Greg couldn't do all of the care taking he wanted to do, not right at the moment. "I can't do it like I want, so.... just. Please."

"I'm going to call," Gil repeated, offering him the card from Molly. "You know, I think she really likes you. I should be jealous." That was teasing, while Gil walked away to pat down Greg's very sneaky, very ingenious, cell phone and pager-stealing Poppa.

"Yep. I'm a hot younger man, and she thinks I'm good for you." Maybe not so hot. Especially since Greg hadn't gotten a chance to look in a mirror yet. That idea kind of freaked him out. "But you know I'll never leave you."

"Uh-huh." Easy agreement. "After all, you snore and I don't even care. I think I'd miss hearing that, actually, so.... Ah, he's getting sneaky, you know? Inside jacket pocket."

"Yeah, well. He wants everybody to leave you alone. Poppa knows I'm greedy." Greedy and falling asleep despite himself, the joys of pain meds. Maybe Catherine would nudge him when she brought back burgers and coffee.

"There's nothing wrong with not wanting to share. It's a vice we both share." He could hear the tones of Gil turning his phone on, flipping through menus. Tiny little beeps and boops in all different notes sounded. Gil was calling, and Gil was right, too. Gil didn't like to share Greg too much more than he had to.

Greg was probably going to be sharing a Scrabble board with Gil for a while after he went into surgery, and that would be okay. Poppa Olaf would write him cheat hints on post-it notes, or he could just whisper them, and Gil would never know, at least not for a week.

That was the kind of thought that could give a guy pretty good dreams, Greg figured, and drifted off for a while.

* * *

In his last life, Greg could have been an extortionist. Gil could picture Greg in turn of the century New York, selling Protection to immigrants who were setting up ramshackle businesses. He could do it, suggest something and make it seem like it was a choice when, honestly, it wasn't.

There was no choice for Gil other than 'pick up the phone and dial'. No second option, no negotiation. Logic set in after he'd made the call, after he'd been a little rattled by that note.

Roses, and a little bird remark. Gil didn't waste too much time thinking it over, because he could immediately process through the implication of that. It was over, sure, but he knew that Starling was still alive. That was good. They'd been on the lam, what, two, three years, something like that? Good for them, Gil guessed when he pulled to a stop at the department, the half-finished soy-latte that only Catherine would have ordered still in his hand.

Greg was in good hands with Catherine -- ironically enough -- and Poppa Olaf while Gil took care of arranging his leave time.

It was going to be interesting, asking for leave from Covallo after their most recent encounters. Gil would guess that the man would puff up and sputter, assume that Gil was requesting the time off because of Greg. It probably wouldn't occur to him that Gil would need the time for himself, or that he would give a murder case over to Nicky. That was what Gil was going to do, though.

Priorities. He felt guilty that there was a dead woman whose case he wasn't going to solve, and he was so close, so, so close, but. He wouldn't do her any good if he went to court and had to have an interpreter, if he had to strain to read lips. Being disabled, no matter what anyone said, was discrediting. In a perfect world, it wouldn't be. In reality.... Reality was far from perfect and far from forgiving. There was going to be enough trouble getting Greg back into the lab without people questioning the quality of his work.

Another sip of coffee, and Gil left it in the cup-holder before he slid out of his Tahoe and headed to enter the building.

Everything was still a wreck, but at least the only lingering scent was that of fairly clean smoke. Even that was fading, Gil could tell, replaced by the scent of cleansers, the smell of the sheets of plastic now draped around Greg's lab. Things were already being set to rights, but Gil didn't have time to stop and look around, see what they were doing. He had business to take care of.

Hopefully Covallo was in. If he wasn't, Gil was going to have to head back out for his coffee before he settled in to stand and lean against the man's door until he did come by. Thankfully, glass windows added a level of transparency to the goings on in the lab, and Gil could see that he was in before Covallo could see him. He didn't knock, just opened the man's door.

"Could I have a moment of your time?"

"Gil." The guilt-tinged sound of his name carried through the room. "Of course, of course. I, uh, didn't expect you back in my office so soon."

Gil offered a tight smile as he stepped in, and closed the door behind him. No, of course he hadn't been expected back so soon after Covallo had tried to railroad him. "I need to take some of my leave time, effective immediately."

"Gil, I can't let you do that. You haven't.... you haven't signed anything formal, domestic partnership agreements, anything like that. Have you?" Obviously, Covallo didn't know where to start in his protestations.

He wasn't going to favor Covallo with an answer to that particular question. "It.... actually has nothing to do with that. I managed to reschedule a surgery and get in a little sooner than I'd expected."

"Oh." That headed off any further argument at the pass, and Gil was deeply grateful for that. He wasn't in any state to be having arguments with anyone. Not really. "All right, then. Just fill out the paperwork. How long will you be gone?"

"Seven to ten days, depending on how fast I adjust." Covallo probably didn't want to hear that, of course -- Catherine was already out on five days of leave. "I'm going to leave Warrick Brown as acting supervisor."

"Not.... Oh." 'Oh' again summed it up. Ordinarily, it would have been Catherine, but the night shift was going to be down to bare bones at the rate they were going. "You can't wait until Catherine is back?"

"I can't wait. I'm scheduled for tomorrow morning." He shrugged that, but he could feel tired tension building in his back. As long as he didn't have to say what it was, it would continue seeming distant and unreal.

"I don't have a lot of choices here. You're making things difficult." Not on purpose, Gil wanted to say. After all, Covallo had brought a lot of it on himself. "I'll have to reverse the suspension and move it to next week at this rate. Bring me a copy of this week's schedule; maybe I can shuffle around the rest of the staff, get someone from swing to fill in."

"I'd appreciate that, and I'm sure that my CSIs would." Gil tilted his head down a little to look at Covallo. No matter what, he'd spend at least half an hour of the time that he'd promised Greg he'd spend sleeping filling out paperwork instead. "This isn't anything I can put off longer than I already have."

The worst thing was that he didn't know if he'd be coming back. He wasn't going to mention that; not yet. It wasn't time for that, and he didn't want to talk about it with Covallo at all. ONe ear was so bad the surgery seemed uncertain, and the other wasn't quite as difficult to work with. So if it came down to that....

Handing in his resignation from a distance would be easier.

"I hope everything goes well."

"So do I." Being a CSI was his life in so many ways. He'd spent his whole life helping to put away the bad guy, and he'd never been happier than when he'd been doing just that, directly rather than through the Coroner's office. If worse came to worst, though, he could do that again. He could be a traveling consultant like Terri, he could.... He could do a lot of things.

If it came to it, if he got that desperate, the FBI would take him back in a heartbeat. He wouldn't tell Greg that was always an option that he kept on his table. Greg wouldn't understand, or worse, he'd try to pretend that he did and then eat his liver out over it in private.

No. Not Greg. Greg would probably throw something at his head, if Gil seriously considered it. He'd yell and throw something that would crash with a satisfying tinkle of glass and probably result in the two of them having to do some home repair.

"Get me that list, and then we'll see you when the doctor says you can come back to work."

There was an odd look in Covallo's eyes, and in the back of his mind, Gil toyed with what kind of surgery Covallo thought Gil was taking time off for. "Thank you. I'll be back once I have those sheets."

It was good to leave the office before Covallo asked Gil what he was doing. It was obvious that the man was curious, that he _wanted_ to know what Gil was having done. It was also apparent that he wouldn't ask under any circumstances, because he knew that he had already pushed too far at the edges of things better left untouched.

He'd already pried at Gil's relationship with Greg, and of course he probably had the bare facts of William Graham's existence in the back of his mind. It was enough to make a man like Covallo wonder what would happen when and if Gil Grissom finally snapped.

Nothing assured job security quite like having the combination of expertise, intelligence, and shady past that Gil had. He smiled to a dayshift worker that he passed on the way to his office, and hoped that Ecklie was out actually working.

* * *

When Greg swam back up from sleep, Gil was gone. He noticed that almost immediately now. Gil's presence was the difference between feeling safe and feeling alone. That was kind of funny, because he remembered a time when he was a kid, and his Isoäiti and his Poppa had to put a twin bed in their room because he was so scared of the dark that he could only feel safe if he was sleeping in the room with them.

His poppa wasn't there either, and even though he could hear breathing, it wasn't Gil and it wasn't Poppa Olaf. That kind of narrowed it down to being nobody he wanted to be in a room with -- Gil's favorite serial killer or his mom.

He didn't want to open his eye to see what fate wanted to put him through just then.

"You gonna keep faking sleep?" Catherine. That was okay, because he could face Catherine without any problems. It was sad that he'd rather face her in those circumstances than his own mom.

"I don't know. Are we alone in here, or is somebody gonna catch me if I open my eye and ogle your boobies?"

"We're all alone. Gil's either sleeping or wrapping up his case, and your grandfather probably went home to sleep, too." If it was the middle of the night, then why was she there? "How're you feeling?"

"Like shit," Greg confessed, giving her a little tip of his mouth. "But, you know, they keep coming in and giving me good drugs. How long was I out?" He'd obviously slept through coffee and burgers and just about everything else.

"A while. I kept your food for you, and I think your coffee's going to be cold. I'd say.... five hours?" She smiled, and leaned forward. Catherine had been there for a while, because her coat was over the back of the chair.

"Yeah. Sleep five hours, awake two, sleep another six.... All I need are diapers and we could pretend I was a six month old," Greg joked, rubbing one eye. "My mom come back?"

"No, not yet." Catherine sucked in a slight breath. "And I think that's for the best? She expects the worst of you, and we know you're not like that."

"She's disappointed I didn't wanna be a doctor when I grew up," Greg answered, sighing. "Poppa and Isoäiti raised me, more or less, because she was too busy, and Gunnar.... It's all weird and complicated." He gave a tiny shrug, wincing despite himself.

Catherine leaned back and grabbed the burger bag from behind her. "Do you want to eat something and tell me about it?"

"I definitely want to eat something," Greg offered, giving a little sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "It's not a big deal. I don't know why she came. I mean, it's not like we're close."

"Because there was an accident in the lab and you were very seriously hurt, Greg...?" Catherine half suggested. She as taking a foil-wrapped hamburger out of the bag, and even cold, a hamburger was a hamburger. "I just.... wasn't prepared to hear her say that she thought you were sleeping your way to the top."

"Yeah. She's always been kinda pissed off that Poppa thought he could take better care of me than Gunnar, so." And wasn't that a long story? His poppa coming home to find him alone locked in his bedroom when he was two hadn't resulted in anything pretty, or so Greg's Great-Auntie Viljä; told him. He didn't even remember it. It was just that his parents hadn't ever figured out what to do with him, and everyone had said he was a handful, and. And, Greg might tell Gil about it sometime, but he'd never tell Catherine.

"I still don't see what that has to do with being so negative about you. You.... are her son."

He'd shrug if he was up to it. Instead, he just held out one hand for the burger, smiling when she handed him a cut-up piece instead. Catherine was a pretty good mom. "Yeah, well. She's always been busy, and, uh. You know. It's complicated."

"I bet." Her eyebrows went up a little, but she let him get away with it. "But that's still no reason to assume the absolute worst. I guess I got offended for you when I talked to her."

"Thanks." Greg appreciated that. His family pretty much just ignored the general bitterness that seeped from his mother. It wasn't her fault. Okay, so it was a shared burden of fault between his parents or something. 'Som man reder sa ligger man', as Poppa always said. After all, they had both known the consequences, and had gone ahead and ended up with Greg, anyway, and that had made medical school difficult for his mom and working like a dog even harder for his dad. Greg had always kind of wondered why they bothered staying together. It wasn't for him, that was for sure. "Anyway. I have Poppa, and he's pretty cool."

"Your grandfather...." Catherine trailed off with an easy grin. "Is a card. I can see where you take a lot of your habits from." And his Isoäiti, but Catherine hadn't ever met her.

She was probably out with her friends playing wild bridge games just then, or Scrabble. Scrabble always made Greg think of her. He still hadn't managed to beat her, at least not since the banning of all science related terms.

"Yeah, well, I'm a pretty charming fellow. I got it honest." He munched happily on his burger piece for a moment before asking, "Did you happen to hear Gil making an appointment? I mean, I fell asleep, and I wanted...."

"When he left, he said he was going to tell Covallo he was taking a week off, immediately, and to tell you. Tomorrow, seven am." Catherine's mouth compressed as she looked at him before offering her another burger piece. "When did you catch on that he was losing his hearing?"

"When I started having to nudge him every time I wanted to talk to him," Greg admitted. "I wanted to say something, but I got the feeling that it was better to wait until he did. Then I jumped on it with both feet, just...." It was awkward. "This. You know."

"I know." She drew in a shaky breath then, and it made her eyebrow furrow faintly. "About that, Greg."

"Yeah?" He was pretty sure that he knew what Catherine was going to say, but saying it for her would take something away from it. It was like Gil and his hearing.

He didn't want to blurt 'you did it, didn't you?!' at her because wow, would that ever take the wind out of her sails. Catherine's eyes dragged over the bandaged part of his face, over gauze, and then she ran a hand back through her hair like she did when she was frustrated. "The evidence under the fume-hood that exploded was mine. Hodges had left the burner on, but I.... I should have checked before I put it under there. I'm sorry, Greg. I'm sorry."

Wow. He had expected that. He had known it was coming. So where had that shaky breath come from, anyway?

"It's okay, yanno. I mean, it could have happened to anybody. I could have done it." He wasn't going to be bitter. No. Now wasn't the time for that. Maybe it never would be.

"You didn't. I did, and I just, I wasn't thinking, Greg. I'm so sorry. I.... God, your eye, and your back, and I don't know what I can do...."

"Hey," Greg cut her off. "Hey. You're here. Gil can't be, he needs to rest, and.... if you want to do something for me? You can take care of him some. He kind of doesn't take good care of himself. The house is probably upside down."

That got a shaky kind of laugh out of her, and she offered him another piece of burger almost dutifully. "God, it took forever to get him to remember to lock his front door. You're probably right."

"Yeah. So, you know. Just keep an eye on him for me. Make sure he remembers to eat and stuff. He's gonna have surgery in the morning. Don't let him be alone."

"I won't." It was weird seeing Catherine look that sad, that contrite. "I.... God. I'm so sorry, and I almost decked your mother and...."

"Seriously?" Greg wished that grinning didn't hurt so badly. "I mean, _seriously_? Hey, next time you get that urge, just make sure I'm awake for it!" He had to see that. It wasn't that Greg didn't like his mother, it was just that.... well, she wasn't much his mom, just like Gunnar wasn't much his dad. His grandparents had been that for him. His grandparents were great and still young, and just.... amazing. He didn't want to think about how his life would've been if he hadn't been with his grandparents. Greg guessed he probably wouldn't be where he was now. He'd probably be a doctor, and even though he'd have both of his eyes, it probably wouldn't have been one third as fun.

"I don't think she'll say any of those things again, but if she does, Greg? I'll make sure you get a front row seat."

"Thanks." He meant that. Okay, so maybe he wasn't as forgiving of her blowing up the lab as he was pretending to be, but it could have happened to anybody, and Greg was just so grateful that he wasn't responsible for it that he could forgive a lot. The eye that they hadn't talked about yet.... Well. He'd think about that later. "You know, I think I'm full? Hospital food is evil."

"Do you want any of your coffee?" She folded the half-a-burger back up in foil. He could probably get her to bring him a fresh one in the morning, but for now it was a nice change of smell in the room. Antiseptics and drugs and flowers, now with a hint of coffee, burgers, and patty melt.

"Just the smell makes it heaven," Greg said, shifting slowly in the bed. He was starting to hurt, so it was probably time to call for one of the nurses. On top of all that, his catheter was driving him nuts. Everything tickled. He'd rather just go to pee, but he'd probably have a hell of a time actually hitting the bowl. Greg figured his depth perception had to be seriously fucked.

"Okay." Catherine sat back a little, and left the coffee on the countertop. "So, Molly sent you two bouquets, or did Gil pick these roses up himself?"

"I have a secret admirer," Greg teased. It wasn't exactly false, was it? It was just totally freaky. "Gil's a closet romantic." The kind of closet romantic who brought a stuffed amoeba to the hospital for Greg. That was his kind of closet romantic. Geekiness and sitting by Greg's bedside until he was ready to fall over. Every time Greg tried to scold Gil about that, Gil had the ready-made answer of _'but you did it'_ to use against Greg.

"Is that what that blob is?"

"My secret admirer?" Greg chuckled. "Yeah. Black Death keeps trying to steal me from Gil, but then Gil does something totally romantic and poor Black Death ends up on the bedroom floor."

Catherine probably didn't want the mental images that gave her, but she smiled well enough when she leaned forward to touch his hair. He liked the mental images of that, being home in bed with Gil, having sex that made the bed shake. Yeah, she probably thought the roses were from Gil, which was actually kind of logical of her to expect. "I bet you'd kill for a shower. With or without your black death thing."

"I probably smell like I've got the black death," Greg mourned, heaving a sigh. That actually felt kind of nice. His stomach was full, he had his plague bacilli, and he had Catherine's promise that she'd take care of Gil since he couldn't. "I hope the surgery goes well. I mean. Gil loves being able to hear things. Who doesn't? But.... I think it's something pretty special for him. You know?"

She nodded, eyes on his face while she talked. She was probably waiting for him to fall asleep. "I know his mother's deaf." Was deaf, but hell, Gil probably hadn't told Catherine that, either. "So maybe that made him appreciate hearing more. I don't know. I know.... he's pretty scared. I'll make sure he's okay, and Jim, too. So don't worry about it, okay, Greg?"

"I won't worry," Greg promised. His eyes were drooping despite himself, despite the way that everything hurt. "Make sure he gets here? And Poppa's okay? He'll want.... to come...."

"I'll make sure he gets here, too," Catherine told him softly. "Do you want me to get you a nurse?"

"Mmm? Mm. Yes. Please." Please, because he did kind of hurt. "Or, hey. I think there's a button to push on the medicine thing. Gil usually keeps an eye on it."

"This button over here?" Catherine leaned towards it, and she probably had no idea that leaning that way was flashing him. Life was good to him like that. It was a damn shame that Catherine's boobs did less for him than the sight of Gil snoring on the pillows next to him. Greg remembered a time when that wouldn't have been the case.

"Uh-huh."

Of course, being in proximity to Catherine's boobs didn't mean he was going to get laid. Being in proximity to Gil snoring meant that getting laid was very likely. Maybe that was the difference. Greg didn't like to think that he was ALL about getting laid, but getting laid was nice. He especially liked getting laid on those lazy afternoons when he woke from barely dozing to find Gil fucking the stuffing out of him, Black Death under his hips and his ass in the air.

Greg wanted to go home, and he couldn't yet. He could only wait, wait and hope everything worked out and that Gil would be okay. He wouldn't know for a while, not until way after the surgery, so until then it was probably best to settle in for drugged sleep and drifting dreams about slow, easy afternoon fucking.

* * *

Audun lingered outside the hospital room, waiting patiently for someone to go inside -- a nurse, a doctor, anyone, so that she could see who was in the room first. Saying goodbye to Greg was the thing to do; after all, she had come all the way to Las Vegas. She was his mother, despite everything, and it should feel natural to do that sort of thing, to say goodbye before she left.

Honestly, Audun wished that something, anything, had come up to keep her in San Gabriel. If she had known that her father would be present.... Well. At least Gunnar had refused to come.

Gunnar wouldn't have reacted well at all. It was bad enough that Greg was.... doing what he did. Working in a lab when he could've been a doctor, or something so much more than a gopher for the police -- that was bad enough; but she couldn't shake the fact that he was sleeping with his boss. That he.... wasn't living with a girl, but a man her age.

She was sure that Gunnar's reaction would have been bad, and that he would have assumed that the lab explosion was Greg's fault. They had both been so young when Greg was born, and Gunnar had wanted her ambitions fulfilled, wanted for her to have all the things she had planned before they had ended up accidentally pregnant. There had been talk of an abortion, but in the end, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

It probably would have been best if she had. Then, her father would never have known, never held it against Gunnar. It was hypocrisy that he did, of course; Audun knew that her parents had been forced to leave home because of an almost identical situation that had resulted in the birth of Audun's eldest brother. Perhaps things would have been different if she had wanted another child, had the time to have one. Perhaps if she had given up her dreams, become a stay-at-home mother like her own....

Except that she hadn't. She was still sure, so very sure, that she'd gone wrong somewhere. That somehow placing her job above her son had led him to.... what he was doing now.

He could have been so much more -- he could have had a family and a perfect life. Greg was so naturally intelligent and had such an aptitude for anything he wanted to learn. He just didn't _apply_ himself the way that he should, almost certainly the result of being raised by her father.

Maybe it was a change that had come with getting older; Audun could only guess that was the truth of things. When she had been young, being successful was the single most stressed possibility for the life laid before her. She wasn't sure when 'be successful' had changed to 'be happy', but perhaps that was the difference between herself and her child.

It was too late now to do anything about it. Too late to stress 'be successful' to him when he was lying in a hospital bed with one eye, and he was sleeping with his boss. It wouldn't get him far in life, and she guessed it was probably the dumbest thing he'd done because Greg didn't even have the usual motives for sleeping with one's boss.

A nurse passed down the hall, and opened the door to her son's room. It was thankfully empty of her father and her son's lover, so she could say goodbye in her own way and her own time. She could make it quick, and then make her getaway to the airport.

"....Mom? 's 'at you?"

He looked so hazy, her goof-off, wild-haired son. Part of her whispered that it wasn't too late for him to make a turnaround of his life. Maybe things would fall apart in Vegas and he'd leave the town and his boss, and....

Pipe dreams. "Mmm-hmmm. How are you feeling?"

"Mkay." Sweet, sleepy boy. She had never gotten to see that when he was small, always in class or at the hospital, and Greg had always been with her parents because Gunnar was supporting her education and their family, and it was all so much. So hard. It made her wish.... well, but if wishes were horses, even beggars would ride. That was how the saying went, wasn't it?

And for all of that hard work, she had.... a job she loved, and a son she didn't know, and there was no interest in knowing for either one of them. "When do you think they'll let you leave? Your doctor says you're recovering well...."

"They figure it'll be another couple days, because of the skin graft and the eye. They don't want me to get out of here too early and have to come back in. They're a lot of trouble, I guess." Greg managed a smile for her, and it made her feel a little guilty. "You're heading home. I hope you have a good trip."

"Thank you." She leaned in, reached for his hand. Just for a moment, and later she'd wonder if it was that smile that had made her do it. "I was talking to your coworker, Greg. Catherine. And I know I hardly know you at all. I never expected.... you to do anything at all."

"It's okay, Mom." He wasn't just saying it; he seemed to actually _mean_ it. He had grown up, and she hadn't been there. She had never known him, and now she probably never would. "I know."

"You're happy here? At this lab, with, with Gil?" Some part of her wanted to know that he was, even if his view of happy was skewed, even if his life's goal was happy.

"I learn something new every day," Greg told her, looking up into her face. When had he grown up? How had she missed it? "I get to play with dangerous chemicals all the time, and solve crimes, and help people, even if it's just from my lab. And Gil's a great guy. He loves me. He needs me."

"He's so very old for you, Greg...." Pragmatism leapt out of her throat before she could stop it, but it was out there, trying to parry back simple statements like 'he loves me, he needs me'.

One last attempt to get Greg to see reason, Audun guessed.

The way Greg smiled at her was old, too, in a way that it ached to see. Had she put that look on his face? "Poppa told me once that you're only as old as you feel. If that's true, and I kind of think it is.... well, Gil and I both stopped around twelve and never got past there. It's a good thing."

She reached a hand out to touch his hair, eyes dropping to the stuffed beady-eyed thing in his arms. Maybe that was true. He'd seemed twelve when he'd left for college, and that had been a decade ago. "If he ever hurts you.... You know your poppa would get him for it."

Not his father.

His poppa.

Greg understood that, though; she could tell, and that made her a little sad. A lot sad, maybe. "I know, but he won't. He's not that kind of person."

"Okay. Are you going to visit anytime soon...?" The alarm on her watch started to beep -- time to go and get a taxi to the airport so she wouldn't miss her flight.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "Everything is kind of up in the air. Gil's got surgery on Tuesday, and I think they'll let me go sometime then or Wednesday if I'm lucky, but.... I don't think we've got any plans, Mom."

"Okay." She leaned in to kiss his forehead for a moment. "If you do get into the area, we should.... get to know each other again."

The little sound he gave made her heart ache, as if he couldn't quite believe that she wanted that. "Ah. Um. Okay. If we go, or.... if we take a trip. I promise. We'll come see you."

"Get better. I'll tell your father about how you are...." Another beep, because she hadn't turned off the alarm yet. "I have to go."

"Have a safe trip home," Greg told her, and she couldn't help wanting to kiss his forehead again. Despite everything, he was her only baby, even if he didn't love her the way that children should, and she wondered if she loved him the way a mother should. She wasn't a good mother, and it was too late to fix all of that. Too late to try again. The most Audun could do was offer to be an adult, a friend, maybe. Something.

"Thanks."

Thanks, and that was it, no real goodbyes. She turned to leave, and he let her.

Maybe that had been the problem all along.

* * *

The world was silent, and that was possibly the most horrible thing Gil Grissom had ever suffered. Silence had so much meaning, and no meaning at all, bound up together in one deeply terrifying package.

It was only the cotton padding, rolled up and stuffed into his ears to shield against infection. It was only that, blocking sound from him and protecting the results of the surgery just as well as earplugs could. The doctor had told him that they would know in a week how things were, and then Catherine, unexpectedly, had shown up and driven him home. He'd wanted to stop and see Greg, but the aftereffects of the anesthesia were something he was still trying to shake off.

Anesthesia and pain meds were remarkably like being drunk without the vomiting. The whole world was tilted funny, leaving Gil giddy and just a little silly. He wished Greg was at the house, and he wasn't sure how long he had been drowsing there alone in their bed. It had been a while, he was sure of that much, he just couldn't tell how long 'a while' actually was. There was sunshine, so maybe it hadn't been very long, or maybe it had been all night.

He stretched an arm out, peering at the sheet wrinkles on his skin, and decided that he could've been there all night after all. Tiredness had probably mingled with painkillers and the anesthesia to force him to catch up on missed sleep. He had a lot of time to sleep, but he needed to get up, somehow, and get to the hospital to see Greg.

Gil hadn't meant to be gone that long. Greg would be worried about him, wondering if he was coming or not, and....

Was that the front door or his imagination? Percussion was something Gil was becoming accustomed to feeling. Maybe it was Poppa Olaf coming in to get something for Greg, so he could get up, change clothes, and catch a ride to the hospital.

First he had to sit up, and then he could get pants on -- not the firefly boxers he was wearing -- and an actual shirt. Maybe he could get Poppa Olaf to wait around long enough to let him try to make himself presentable. The last time he'd shaved had been just before he'd gone in for the surgery, just after he'd closed the case. There wasn't much question that Kent was going to walk on his connect the dot hand print, but it was all that they had. It was the best he could do.

Gil shifted, turning to try and get off the bed, and saw the bedroom door open. It was startling, and even more of a surprise to see Greg shuffle in slowly. What was he doing home?

Greg was wearing a button down shirt that was too big for him, one of Gil's blue oxfords. Gil could mentally process the point of that, even as he leaned back on his hands, watching Greg. There was a big foam-looking bandage over the bone of Greg's left cheek, and a wide pad of white dressing pressed over Greg's left eye. The doctors had told Gil that Greg would need a fake eye implanted to help maintain facial structure and for self esteem reasons. Maybe they'd done it already and maybe they hadn't.

Gil couldn't quite ask, taking in the sight of Greg out of bed and standing in front of him for the first time in too long.

Hi.

Reading lips wasn't a problem when it was Greg talking, smiling and moving towards the bed slowly. Maybe that was because Greg didn't say anything else, just reached up to unbutton the shirt and shift it off of himself slowly, dropping it by the bed. Gil wasn't inclined to complain, especially not when he saw Poppa Olaf come in the door, holding Greg's Black Death.

Gil lifted his hand to give Poppa Olaf a faint wave, trying to control himself from reaching out to touch Greg's stomach, to pull him down onto the bed with him. Trying to keep himself from talking, even when he knew that he could use the vibrations in his chest, his own sense of it, to talk. His mother had always been able to do that, even if she preferred to use sign.

Even in the silence, there was perfection of sound, through sight and touch. Interpretation was just one piece of the puzzle. "Thank you for bringing him home." If he thought too hard he'd wonder if he was too quiet or too something, too off-sounding.

Poppa Olaf nodded at him, in deference to the fact that Gil couldn't hear. Poppa thought about those things, which was nice. Gil had liked Greg's Poppa before, but he could honestly say that he was coming to love the old man. He was a better father than his own had been, and Greg had told Gil once that his Poppa and Isoäiti were a package deal that came with him.

Gil could see why.

Greg crawled into the bed and laid on his belly, one arm carefully stretched out to touch Gil. That left Gil torn between getting up to grab Greg's black plague for him, or lying back with Greg and not moving until he had to.

Decisions, decisions. Gil could see Poppa talking to Greg, could feel the faint vibrations of Greg talking to Poppa, the press of Greg's forehead against his arm helping him to know Greg was talking. Poppa came forward and gently tucked the stuffed black toy between them, shifting the covers back up over their bodies.

Gil closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them almost in desperation to keep some contact with his environment other than touch. He shifted, settled in better, and turned to touch Greg. If he was missing things that he wouldn't have missed otherwise, and if he was having more trouble than usual dividing his attention, he knew that he had the most legitimate excuse in the world.

Two of them. Greg was home, even if he still looked hurt and tired, and he was deaf to the world. Even if he'd had his full hearing just then, he probably would've been the same. He was tired, they'd spent so much time in the hospital, and having Greg injured beside him made him want to curl close and protect him. It was as much a reaction from the older part of him as the current one, the integration between them smoother now. Greg had done that, and Gil petted his forehead tenderly. He felt Greg's mouth move against his arm, could see Greg's eyes close.

It was easy to shift the way instinct wanted Gil to, glad he was comfortable in boxers and a t-shirt and that Greg was wearing a pair of old jeans that were so worn through that they were something he could sleep in. Easy to lie on his side while he looked at Greg's face turned towards his so close, close as he'd wanted to get in the hospital.

Greg's visible eye was closed, dark lashes brushing against his cheek. With his other eye covered and his bandaged cheek, he looked all of twelve, desperately tired and ready to rest.

Gil had never been so in love.

He was just bad, no, a failure at that part where he was supposed to protect the ones he loved. Gil had never.... done it well. The only difference was that his failure this time had been somewhat less spectacular than the last one. Greg was home, safe in their bed, tired and drained and hurting, but the sun was out and Greg was in it. Greg was still alive, eyelashes heavy against his cheek, mouth lax. Gil wasn't ever going to move that arm. It didn't matter how dead it went, or how long Greg slept, he wasn't going to move anything, not even when he realized that Poppa Olaf had left them alone and left the door open behind himself.

The faint peek of one brown eye made Gil smile, and Greg's mouth curved in response. _Hi_ , he said again, arm rubbing against Gil. _I'm home._

"I noticed." He wished that he could concentrate on Greg's whole face more than his mouth, but he'd missed looking at Greg's mouth, and there wasn't the faint obscuring of an overly protective bandage any more.

Gil shifted a little more, and while he wanted to put his other arm around Greg, he didn't want to hurt his back. It was easier to rest his palm against Greg's chest. "How are you?"

 _Tired._ _Glad to be home. Glad to be in bed with you._

Greg was enunciating, and Gil was grateful for that. It helped him to be sure of what Greg was saying, and made him love him even more for thinking about it. A lot of people yelled, as if that would make things more clear, but it never helped. It didn't matter whether they were speaking to someone deaf, or someone who spoke another language. Hopefully the surgery would take. Otherwise he'd have to get much better at lip reading than he was, and he'd have to teach Greg sign. Bit by bit. Maybe he could do that anyway. Until then, they were going to go through a lot of pads of paper.

"Me, too." He didn't dare drop his eyes yet, but he spread his hand on Greg's chest, shifted until it rested right over the lub-dub of Greg's heartbeat. "I've missed feeling this."

Greg's eye closed, Gil could tell, but his lips spread in a steady smile. _I love you, you know._ Gil knew. _My mother was...._ Gil lost something in there, but it was okay. _....told her you would never hurt me. Funny. That she'd care._

"She's your mother. Even if she wasn't there, she still worries, probably has regrets." Gil inched a little closer, feeling Greg's hair tickling his arm. "I love you, too. It's good to have you back...."

 _Sleepy_ , Greg murmured before nuzzling into him. Of course he was. They probably still had him on a drug cocktail to prevent infection and help with pain.

"Then sleep. We'll all still be here when you wake up." He could sleep, too, but Greg knew that. They were heading towards it, shifting closer and getting comfortable. Gil's head would hurt when he woke up, sleeping on his side like that, but he wanted to be that close.

He wanted to be able to see Greg, touch him, love him even while he was sleeping. The best way to do that was there, in their own home, close together. Staying in the hospital with him had been one type of caring, but this was what Gil loved best. Even if he couldn't hear Greg, he knew he was there, could feel him, and Greg knew he was there. They could regroup together later, get better together, after dozing.

Everything could wait for that.

* * *

Aside from the bandages, things were mostly back to normal. There was some difficulty in moving around, and Gil still had his ears stuffed full, but Greg could handle that. Mostly.

He felt optimistic in general, but he figured that there wasn't any other way for him to feel. It was the best way to go about things, he felt, sitting very carefully at the kitchen table and watching Gil cook lunch.

It wasn't like being pessimistic was going to make things better faster. He still hurt, and he wasn't quite ready to go back to work yet. He was kind of thinking about getting a stylish eye patch or something, go for that pirate look while he waited for his eye socket to settle in enough that he could get a prosthetic. There wasn't any way to tell how Gil's hearing was going, though he was getting a pretty good taste of what life would be like with Gil if he was going to end up completely deaf except with optimism, at least for the moment. Greg had the feeling that optimism would be going right out the window if anything went wrong. Gil wasn't what Greg would call good with obstacles, at least not when it came to himself. He could respect other people's problems, their difficulties and impediments. He didn't accept his own very well, almost as if Gil didn't feel that he should have any.

One day, they were going to have to talk about that.

For the time being, Greg was going to avoid that conversation, mostly because anything too complicated had to be discussed with pen and paper. Gil's lip-reading, as he'd said earlier, was rusty. So was his talking-without-hearing -- it was something Greg was facing the possibility of just having to get used to. Gil's voice was ever so slightly off, the tones a little wrong.

He had learned some basic sign, mostly because it seemed to delight Gil. Hello, and I love you, and the sign for penis. Greg had asked for that one, and Gil had given him the kind of grin that nearly split his face. Most people probably didn't even know that Gil could smile like that.

Just for laughs, he waved his arm around and caught Gil's attention before quickly forming the P and tapping his nose.

Gil laughed -- and at least that still sounded normal -- and shook the half-sliced cucumber he was holding at Greg. "Either I can finish cutting this to steam, or you can distract me and we'll never get through lunch." Because Gil would offer to suck him off again, which was nice. His back hurt too much to be active in bed yet, stiff and weird to move, but Gil was creative.

Greg was never ever going to look at the bathroom the same again. He was pretty sure Gil's knees agreed with him.

He let Gil go back to slicing cucumber and then slowly laid his head down on the table. Greg could admit to still being sleepy. There was something about the rounds of antibiotics and lower-level pain medications that made him that way, so he closed his eye and listened to Gil puttering around in the kitchen. He probably wasn't ever going to get used to closing just one eye, even if it felt like he was closing a second one beneath the bandages.

Gil had helped Greg with his bandages that morning, and hadn't flinched when he'd looked at Greg's eye. He'd taken a damp washcloth and had cleaned around it, de-gunked his eyelashes. It was weirdly intimate -- and had led to that whole blowjob in the bathroom thing -- after all, Greg could've done it himself, but he was pretty sure Gil was trying to make a point.

It was a pretty good point, Greg guessed, that the eye thing and the scars on Greg's face and the burns didn't bother Gil at all. It made him love Gil even more, and it made him supremely grateful that Gil loved him. Nobody else would have done that, Greg was pretty sure. Maybe his Poppa, or his Isoäiti, but that was different.

A lot of things were different.

The sound of the doorbell caught his ears, and he sat up and opened his eye. Gil saw the motion, and glanced Greg's way. "I'm going to check the door," he said clearly. "Be right back."

"Okay." Gil nodded, but kept his eyes on Greg's movement when he slipped off of the low stool and turned to open the door. It was a pretty good thing that he was dressed, even if they hadn't been expecting company. On a piece of paper that he'd also doodled on, Gil had insisted that it would help Greg if he brushed against something with one of his bandages. A little extra padding. God knew Greg had been off-kilter and bumping into things since he had gotten home.

Gil kept an eye on him; and Greg tried to look out for things, but they all seemed to be in slightly different places now. They hadn't moved, of course, but his depth perception was off, and he was having a hard time adjusting to seeing with just one eye. It made him feel clumsy. Thank God Gil put away all of their shoes by the door so that Greg didn't trip over them.

Carefully, he leaned up to the peep hole and looked out. Nick!

It only took a few seconds to throw the locks and open the door. "Hey!"

"Hey -- long time, no see!" Nick, amazingly enough, didn't flinch on his behalf at the 'see' comment like Greg guessed a lot of people would do. "I thought I'd drop by, see how you were doing, leave you some games since the board on the wall says you're still out for a few more days."

"Yeah, well, I've got an appointment on Monday. They'll tell me then if I can go back. Come on in," he invited, stepping back out of the way. "Gil's making some kind of pasta thing with steamed vegetables and a cheese sauce. He wouldn't let me touch any of it. Says he's too hungry to pick out burnt stuff." Greg was pretty sure that he also didn't want to see Greg cut his fingers because of his current problems. With any luck, he'd have a better hold on that by Monday, although he wasn't betting on it. His hands had been shaking pretty badly, and he hadn't been able to hide that from Gil, either. "Plus, he says that the hospital food was bad for me, and my edges are poking him in bad places when we sleep."

"Way too much information, man," Nick grinned. He half-hugged Greg, hands on Greg's upper arms, and stepped back. "It's good to see you. I dropped by during my shift off once, but you were out like a light the whole time. Your Grandpa's cool, though."

"Poppa Olaf is indeed one very cool man," Greg agreed. "C'mon. I'll go dig out an extra plate. I'm sorry I was asleep while you were visiting. I've been kind of out like that a lot lately."

"Hey, you went through a lot. The body likes to take a vacation when stuff goes wrong." Nick had a bag in one hand when he wandered into the living room while Greg locked the doors. Nick understood all about obsessions with double and triple-locking doors. Greg knew that he still balanced a glass bottle on each of his doors at night before he could fall asleep.

"I'm sleeping sixteen hours a day, so I've definitely had a lot of vacation time." Greg laughed. "Hey, leave the bag there." Once they were out of the foyer, Greg could see Gil's back in the kitchen. "We can come back in later."

"But it's offerings for your PS2," Nick grinned, even as he went along with the suggestion, and followed after Greg. "How's the boss doing?"

"He taught me the sign for penis," Greg proclaimed proudly before showing it off to Nick as they stepped into the kitchen. Unfortunately, Gil turned around at that precise moment and caught him at it.

He quirked an eyebrow at Greg, his smirk small, but definitely there. "That's an awkward moment to enter a conversation. Good to see you, Nick." He wiped his hand off on a towel, and offered it to Nick to shake.

Greg could see the gears of Nick's brain creaking forward as he put together apparently perfectly okay Grissom with took time off for surgery Grissom. "Good to see that you're okay. Even if you are teaching Greg how to say penis in sign. He's gunna be using it on Hodges for weeks."

Greg seriously considered the matter, keeping himself turned towards Gil so that Gil could see what he said. "Hey! I hadn't even thought about that!" That was the greatest thing ever, actually. Saying penis or urination to Hodges without Hodges knowing what it was would be wonderful....

He wasn't going to think about the possibility that he wasn't going to be able to go back to work, not for a while, anyway. It was pretty likely that he'd be able to except that able to didn't exactly mean he'd still be good at it. Gil's first thought had been that the shaking was muscle-related, or psychological, but if it was nerves, Greg knew he was kind of fucked.

Gil rolled his eyes. "Now I won't be able to get that idea out of his head. Thanks, Nick."

"No problem, Griss." Gil turned away then, and Nick grinned over at Greg and kept talking. "Did Greg ever tell you how he used to keep himself fed before you started to try to teach him to cook?"

"Hey!" Greg objected. "No fair telling secrets about my eating habits pre-Grissom. Besides...." His eye darted in Gil's direction. "He can't hear you. His ears are full of cotton."

"....cotton?"

"The surgery," Greg explained patiently. Gil was still cooking, adding parmesan into the sauce he was making. "It was on his ears, so. I've learned some sign while we're waiting for it to come out. It's kind of neat, you know."

"Oh." Nick's eyebrows drew together a little, and he quirked a look at Greg for a moment. "Then you learning the sign for penis has taken on a whole new level of I never want to know. That's kind of.... what was wrong with his ears?"

It was good to know that Catherine hadn't been fooled, but that Nick had been.

"Hereditary problem. Something to do with the bone growth in the ears," Greg explained. "They had to go in and remove it, and so right now, he's effectively deaf. It should be okay in another few days. He's gonna be back at work then, anyway."

Nick nodded, glancing at Gil's back for a second before he looked to Greg again. "That's good to hear. We miss both of you guys at the lab. Shift hasn't been half as enjoyable, and we're slammed."

"Sorry." And he was. Honestly, Greg would be delighted if at least one of them could be at work, and as bad as it sounded, he would prefer that it had been him. Gil's surgery was inevitable; the lab blowing up wasn't. "I know Gil will be back as soon as he can, and I'll be back the minute they let me."

"Getting restless?" Nick winked, nudged him playfully and Nick was lucky that it was his good side.

"Hey. You try sleeping all the time and only getting up to pee and wash your face," Greg said, a little strained. Being jostled still wasn't what he'd call pleasant by any short means of the imagination. "I'm glad Gil's here, or I'd be stir-crazy. Sit down."

"Sitting." Nick smiled at him as he pulled out a chair for Greg first, and then one for himself. "Anything I can do to help, since I just kind of dropped in...?"

"You'll just break his rhythm," Greg said, sliding into his chair. He shifted, slowly laid his head down and closed his eye again. "It's better to let him do what he's planning. Besides. He's gonna feed me at least three fourths of it, no matter what else happens. I've been fed until I could bust."

"There are worse ways to convalesce." Nick's chair squeaked a little when he leaned forward and crossed his arms against the tabletop. "Stale pizza and flat soda, and daytime TV reruns, you know?"

"Voice of experience," Greg murmured drowsily, smiling despite himself. "Gil's let me watch all of those America's Greatest Castle reruns, and we watched this thing about meal worms. That was pretty cool."

"Got any cool facts from it?" Nick sounded like he was grinning a little. "C'mon. You had to have picked up something with all that tv."

"Yeah, the fact that it's easy to drift off to sleep draped over Gil's lap while he watches shows about worms," Greg admitted, laughing at himself. "Greatest thing in the world. Honest. I sleep like a baby. Don't even go Octo." Lately, he hardly moved at all, which was pretty weird. He couldn't move with too much sleepy ease, but maybe a little of that had to do with them starting wrapped pretty close together in the first place.

Nick snorted a laugh. "That's like some kind of goddamned miracle. Will you nod off if I try to get you to play Gran Tourisimo?"

"Probably," Greg admitted. He didn't want to tell Nick that he'd just fuck up the game madly anyway, because he couldn't see quite right, and his hands were a mess. So long as they were under his head, Nick couldn't see them shaking.

"I'll leave it for you anyway." Nick patted his head carefully, and then Greg could hear the chair scooting out. "Hey, I'll get that, Griss. Greg, dinner is served. Perk up, man."

"Perking is harder than it looks," Greg said, lifting his head and smiling at Gil. "Thanks. I'm starving," he declared clearly, taking the plate that was being offered to him. It was bound to be delicious, because everything Gil made was.

Greg wasn't going to think about where Gil had learned to cook. He wasn't. Ever. He was just going to be glad that Gil had a thing for cheese and alfredo type sauces on pasta. In fact, pretty much everything Gil made was easily identifiable in nature and smelled good.

"You should be." There was a pad of paper on the table, covered with little scribbles, and Nick was taking an interest in it for the first time.

Greg seriously hoped it wasn't one of their written attempts at silly porn.

"Yeah, well, we could have had breakfast delivered from that menu place, but...." But Gil had eaten Greg in the bathroom instead, and breakfast had kind of gone down the tubes.

"You didn't let Greg try to cook, didja?" Nick asked, wrinkling his nose. "Eurgh."

At least it wasn't the top of the pad that Nick was occasionally glancing at, which had been some actual serious conversation. No, it was about six pages back, when Greg had started to doodle stick coworkers.

"We were distracted by bad TV," Gil lied succinctly. His eyes darted back and forth between Nick and Greg slowly, steadily, so that he could catch conversation.

Greg hoped that Nick couldn't tell he had drawn stick-Warrick chasing after stick-Catherine. He'd ask lots of questions, and Greg might just blush.

"Is that position even possible?" Nick asked, both brows raised.

Gil had just caught that, and he leaned a little to look at the pad, fork in hand and half-twirled into pasta. "Which one?"

"That one," Nick declared, turning it towards him. "No way, man."

"Yeah-huh," Greg mumbled, his mouth full of pasta and cucumber already. Hmmmm. "Izh." Okay, it _was_ , but only if somebody was really twisty. He'd gotten into it for all of three point one seconds before his back had started to hurt, and that had been before he'd been thrown through a piece of sturdy plate glass.

"It's in the Karma Sutra," Gil told him, and turned the pad back towards Nick with something of a smile. "Which means it isn't impossible."

"Yeah, but there's possible and then there's 'why the heck do you wanna try that'?" It was nice that Nick was talking normally, not too-loud or while giving Gil eyeballs. Of course, he probably remembered the case that Gil and Warrick and Sara had worked with the deaf boy who'd been beaten up and ran over and the head of the local school for the hearing impaired, and Warrick and Sara's Big Mistakes with her.

The only problem was that he kept dropping or turning his head, and Greg could see Gil's faint frustration. Reading lips and eating were kind of not a good idea, so it didn't surprise Greg too much when Gil pulled a couple of sheets of paper loose and picked up his pen.

The urge to poke Nick, to tell him that he needed to look at Gil when he spoke, was overwhelming. Greg refrained, though, and just kept eating. Gil could be incredibly cranky about things like that. He hadn't seen it yet, because he had tried hard to keep in mind that Gil needed to see him to 'hear' him, but he figured he had been right. The twist of frustration knitted between Gil's eyes declared it better than anything else could.

"Well," Greg said thoughtfully, turning Gil's way, "I can think of four or five reasons to try it. Mostly just because you can, to see if it'll actually work or if they're screwing with you, you know?"

"So, uh...." Nick glanced over at Greg, and then over to Gil, who was watching. "You guys hit any that didn't work?"

Frustration soothed a little, Gil sat back and reached for his glass. "No, not yet."

There was a reason Nick was Greg's best friend. It was the fact that he didn't flinch away from that kind of question. "There's this thing on page 113 that's not practical if you don't have a vagina, though," Greg said, and he grinned.

Nick eyed them both for a minute, then started to shake his head. "I'd almost ask you what it was, but I probably don't want to know -- it's probably way too kinky for me. I kind of always pegged you guys for being, you know. Like Catherine joked me about being vanilla?"

Greg could see that Gil missed part of that, but he squinted a little and then ate a forkful of pasta. "For every sexual act imaginable, there's someone somewhere in the world who enjoys it. That doesn't make any particular position more or less normal. Normalcy is all in the eye of the beholder."

"And that," Greg noted with a happy sigh, "is why I'm mad in love." There were lots of other reasons, of course, but the fact that Gil didn't find anything truly perverse was a pretty large reason for adoring him, Greg figured.

"Yeah, but there's got to be some stuff where even you'd draw the line, right? There was this one girlfriend I had that wanted me to pee on her, and that just...." Nick shook his head sharply once he'd finished talking, so Greg figured Gil had caught most of it. "Was the exact opposite of doing anything for me."

"Watersports. Admittedly kinky," Greg said, "but it could have been worse?"

Nick obviously didn't believe that, and his expression said as much. "Anything involving body fluids is just right out, Greggo. Not happening."

That amused Greg to no end. "Yeah, well, there's body fluids and body fluids," he noted. "Besides. There's definitely worse than being peed on. Not that I'm inclined to that sort of thing."

Gil was still watching, 'listening', eating and taking in conversation, such as it was. He wasn't saying anything exactly, probably because he was thinking something wicked, which was Greg-thought number two.

"What's worse than being peed on?"

"Being shit on?" Greg suggested, the look on Nick's face making him laugh aloud. "Hey, you asked! You had to know I'd say it!"

"Yeah, well, I didn't.... yeah, okay, I knew you were gonna say it. Man."

Nick rubbed a hand over his face, looking disgusted for a moment -- but not disgusted enough to stop eating. The only thing that could probably freak Nick out enough to break his stride would be to bring up one of those weird human soup kind of cases, where the decomp whiff never went away for weeks.

"Greg plans ahead when he talks," Gil smiled. "Everyone -- even you, I bet -- has tried something that taught them where the lines for their own sexuality were. I'm sure some people who like being peed on tried the other and decided that it just wasn't for them."

"Yeah, well, it's not for me, either, and now I'm _really_ scared to ask about page 113."

Greg snorted with laughter, leaning back slightly. He was careful not to press his back against the rails of the chair back even when he rubbed his belly. "I'm so full I could bust." It wouldn't stop Gil from giving him that look, though

That was okay. Gil would keep the pot on the stove and probably make sure Greg ate again before they went to bed. Making sure that Greg ate and slept and kept all of his burns clean and kept on top of his drugs was about all that Gil could do to help, and he was more than willing to do it except that Gil's balance went off every once in a while.

"Nick, do you want something to drink?"

"Gotta beer?" Nick asked, taking another bite. "This is great, Griss. You sure you didn't used to do this full time someplace?"

"I'm sure. I had a.... somewhat cooking-obsessed friend when I was younger." Gil was standing and turning around after that, like he didn't want to know whatever Nick's reply was.

"Woo. Yeah. Okay, all things considered? I'm thinkin' that I'm not even gonna ask," Nick murmured to Greg once Gil moved. "That was pretty stupid of me."

"Nah. Not stupid," Greg said, shaking his head. "It's easy to forget. It was a long time ago, and things aren't the same now."

"Yeah but...." Nick shook his head. "Just, you know, when that FBI jackass was running around and spouting shit off, and.... I'm guessing he means who I think he means?"

Greg grimaced. "Yeah." He glanced at Gil, watching him rinse a few dishes. "Why don't we go play some? I think I'll probably be awake for at least another hour before Gil makes me take my meds and puts me to bed." Like a six year old.

Nick caught that, grinned a little. "I'd crack a joke right now, man, but.... C'mon. I'll grab the games I left by the door."

"Sure thing," Greg offered, already feeling a little tired. It was irritating, frustrating, and downright pissed him off. He didn't like it, wanted to have his usual energy back. There was nothing to do for it, though, so he stood up and gathered his plate carefully. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Cool." Nick would have everything set up and switched over so the PS2 came up right away, with a game and two controllers ready by the time Greg got back to the living room. It gave him a little time to check on Gil before he went to play a couple of races and pass out.

"Hey." It didn't matter that Gil couldn't see him say it; Greg's arms slid around him, and Greg knew he could feel it. He wished he wasn't quite so sleepy, or that Nick had come along after he'd finished being kind of horny to go with being drowsy. That probably wasn't a nice thing to think.

"Hello there." Gil didn't turn his head, didn't have to look. Greg hugging on to him like that was pretty familiar by then, from almost the start of things between them.

Gil hadn't ever explicitly said so, but Greg was pretty sure Gil liked it a lot, Greg's weird casual affection. He set the freshly cleaned forks on the counter to let them dry. There was a perfectly good dishwasher, which meant that Gil was trying to do something to keep himself busy while he thought.

At least Gil didn't do that weird thing that one of Greg's boyfriends in college had done where he ran around and cleaned shit when he was pissed off. No man was harder to take seriously than one who was folding t-shirts into perfect little squares while demanding to know what the problem was.

Even now, Greg had to stifle laughter over it, and he knew that Gil felt it, too. He didn't ask any questions about it; Greg laughed a lot, and it made him feel better to laugh somehow.

He pulled away for a minute, grabbed the notepad and pen and came back, putting it on the counter. Firm pen strokes declared, _I'M HORNY._

There. That was pleasing just to see. Also a little weird. What was it about being sick? Greg was pretty sure it was the joke of some divine being, making a guy hypersensitive when he was too sick to enjoy it. It was like getting the migraine from hell when there were way too many cases to deal with already. Life's little paradoxes.

Gil pulled the pen from Greg's fingers, and wrote beneath it, _So am I. What do you want to do about it?_

KICK NICK OUT AND FUCK??

Yeah, right. No, they wouldn't do that.

 _I'LL BE TOO TIRED TO PLAY MORE AFTER ABOUT HALF AN HOUR._ Didn't mean he'd be too tired for sex. Or at least, whatever interesting thing Gil came up with.

 _I might just set a timer_ , Gil wrote. Then he turned to look at Greg, pointedly smiling. Yeah, Gil had some kind of idea, and if they were both horny, then they'd make it work.

The only problem now was going to be hiding the fact that he was squirmy and horny from Nick. Ah, well. Greg figured that he'd manage, so he kissed the back of Gil's neck and wandered out of the kitchen, whistling tunelessly.

Maybe he could hide the squirming in with bouncing and twisting and trying to get his car to edge out Nick's. That sounded like a good idea, and if he turned on the surround sound, Gil would at least feel the vibrations from the game.

He hoped that the shaking of his hands wouldn't be so obvious that Nick would feel the need to say something about it. Gil hadn't had much to say so far, but Greg knew that he'd been keeping an eye on them. They'd talk more about it later, when it couldn't be just put down to being connected to the meds or something more immediate.

Nick was sitting loosely cross-legged on the rug, and thrust a controller up at Greg when he got near. "Here. You're player one, Greggo."

"Gee. I should get sick more often," he teased, taking the controller. Greg considered how best to get on the floor for a moment before slowly easing down onto his knees, using one hand to carefully rearrange himself on the floor. He still couldn't stop the little grunt that escaped him with the shift of position, dammit.

Nick seemed to realize the possible problem a little late, and offered a sheepish, "You okay, man?"

"Yeah. Just.... this might not take as long as you hoped," Greg admitted, giving him an edged little smile. It did hurt, or at least feel uncomfortable. Still. It would be okay in a minute or two. Greg needed to move more, anyway. Stretch out, keep using his muscles. It was a use it or lose it kind of thing, even if it did hurt.

"You want me to get you a chair instead? I can help haul you to your feet...."

"Nah, it's okay. I'm okay, swear." He gave an awkward little motion. "Gil'll help me up when I need to get up, and then he'll probably dope me up to the eyeballs. I really like Loritab," he declared. "And I hope that I never have to take any again after this. It tastes awful."

"That's probably to keep people from chugging it," Nick decided sagely. Then he started the game up.

After that Greg was only glad to notice that the shakiness of his hands had no effect on his ability to mash buttons and hit the d-pad and the control stick. Video games weren't DNA processing, and though he guessed he might rattle a pipet around inside a test tube, he could definitely hit square repeatedly, while zipping past Nick's slow-ass driving self.

"WOOO!" Greg cheered, racing around Nick again and running him off the edge of the road. Half the fun, he figured, was that look on Nick's face, an expression of scrunched up concentration, and a sharp, "Aw, dammit!" when Greg hit the finish line just ahead of Nick.

At least he could still play games and win. That was something, right? Yeah.

"Okay. I hate to call it quits after one game, but...." He did kind of hurt, and he wanted to have hot monkey sex with Gil. If it started hurting more, or if he took his pain meds, there was no way that was going to happen.

"I understand." Nick was smiling at him pretty easily, and shifted to get up. "I'll leave all this stuff here -- I mean, I brought it over for you. Maybe you can even get Griss to play. Weirder things have happened, right? I think most games are best if you play 'em when you're delirious, anyway."

Gil was sitting on the leather sofa that had survived transplantation from his apartment, scribbling on the pad of paper. Drawing? Maybe.

"Yeah, well. Give me half an hour and I'll be more than delirious, I'll be passed out cold," Greg admitted with a wry smile. He shifted up onto his knees slowly. That didn't hurt so bad, since it didn't move his back much. "I'll walk you to the door."

Nick was standing, and reached to offer Greg a hand. Whatever Gil was fiddling with, them moving around didn't get his attention. It kind of made Greg want to lunge forward and tackle Nick, just to see if that would get Gil's attention except that he was probably making notes about some experiment to be and he still wouldn't notice. Then, Greg would be groaning and aching and that would just be bad. Plus, Nick would feel it necessary to have the Hookers Vs. Greg discussion again. Just for old times' sake.

"Thanks," Greg said, taking Nick's hand and pulling himself up slowly. It tugged unpleasantly, but it wasn't something he couldn't live with. His arm would settle back in, and it was good to move and get to his feet again. The sofa was so much better for him.

After all, the sofa had Gil, and Gil, he saw when they walked by, was drawing stick figure porn. One of these days, Greg was going to make him stick figure porn and e-mail it to him, just to see what kind of laugh he'd get. Ascii porn.

"Want to take some pasta home with you? I know I'm not the only one who's been known to call cold pizza breakfast," Greg teased as they headed for the front door.

"Nah, I'm good -- a guy only needs one real meal a day, right?" Nick shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "I'll call before I drop in again, but it's good to see that you're okay. Sophia made you a card, but I forgot it in my locker. I'll bring it by tomorrow."

"Cool. Hey, maybe I'll be able to play longer tomorrow," Greg offered, grinning at him. It had been kind of neat. Even with weird depth perception problems, he'd managed to beat Nick. That was mostly because Nick was way too cautious when he played racing games, but Greg wasn't going to complain. "I'll see you then. If you come by around breakfast, when you get off shift, there might even be something to eat."

"You're tempting me with food, man. That's cruel." Nick smiled, and patted his arm gently. "Keep resting, all right? We miss having you in the lab. Tell Griss that I hope his surgery thing heals up well."

"Will do," Greg promised, opening the locks on the door for Nick. He'd lock them again behind him, and set the alarm, too. It didn't matter that Gil's serial killer friend LIKED Greg. He still wasn't planning on making it easy, even if Gil had explained serenely many times that if Hannibal wanted Gil dead, he'd be dead, and nothing could stop him. Greg guessed that kind of applied to the rest of them, and that alarms and locks would only mean that the cops wouldn't take forever to find their bodies.

"Cool. Have a good night, or.... whatever it is."

Greg laughed. "Yeah. Well. Yeah." Yeah, now, goodbye, Nicky. He waved, waiting impatiently until Nick had gotten into his truck and locked the doors behind him before shutting the front door and locking it.

Now.... what could Gil be doing?

Doodling stick figure sex. On closer inspection -- and a little motion of one hand off to the side to get Gil's attention without startling him -- it was stick Greg and stick Gil. Stick Greg was notable by the spiky bits on top of his head, while stick Gil tended to end up with more detailed eyes than all the other stick-people got. There were a lot of stick Gil and Greg doodles that'd met an inky death, but there were three left and circled. Gil had helpfully titled it 'Ideas for Positions That Won't Hurt Your Back'.

"I like this one," Greg pointed to the first, giving a little leer. "Actually, I kind of like all three of those, except that last one would be kind of hard to do. Maybe if I had a vagina, but.... for the record? I really like having a penis."

Gil gave a laugh, and signed 'penises are great', which was probably the most detailed thing that Greg could follow and understand just then. Gil abandoned the pad of paper and pen to the crack between the seat and the back of the sofa, and stood up fast.

The next thing Greg knew, he was getting kissed, which made it impossible to sign any noticeable response back even if he could have thought of one. Thought was pretty much impossible when Gil kissed him like that, one hand on his arm, one hand down by his waist. Gil could put so much passion and adoration in a single kiss that Greg never got tired of feeling it. They could do nothing but kiss for a week and Greg wouldn't complain. Except sex was good, and fucking Gil was great and so was getting nailed by him and.... everything was fantastic.

"Wanna try number one?" he asked after he pulled away, looking straight at Gil.

"Yes." Even if Gil was going to end up not in control, he still was, because he was leaning in while they half-moved, kissing at the undamaged side of Greg's neck.

"Mmmm, I like it when you do that." Greg liked it that Gil didn't think it was gross to take care of his eye, to do what was necessary for his back. He loved it that Gil loved him enough to feed him because hospital food made him skinny and pointy.

"Want to go to bed?"

Gil didn't hear or see that, but Greg could guess that was the general plan because he was being walked towards the bedroom while Gil started to unbutton the borrowed shirt Greg was wearing. Greg liked wearing Gil's clothes whether Gil was there to catch him at it or not, and now he had an excuse to borrow his shirts, because most of Greg's shirts were pull down, long and short t-shirts, while the big button ups were easier on his muscles and looser against his skin.

"God," Greg sighed, squirming at the feel of Gil's hands on his belly. He loved that, loved the way that those hands stroked further down, past the elastic of his shorts and in to grasp his cock. The solid, steady touch made him shudder, made him bring his hands up to clutch at Gil's arms. "Oh, wow. It's been...." Way, way too long.

Gil made a pleased sound, and he lifted his head long enough to kiss the edge of Greg's jaw, guiding him so he wouldn't nick the edge of the doorjamb with his shoulder.

That kind of made Greg's cock a joystick, and didn't that thought go to more than one meaning? "Missed this, going to be careful with you...." Going to get Greg off before they even got near the bed and properly naked, because Gil couldn't help but move his hand over Greg, and if he did that, they'd have to go back to the living room for option number two.

"So good," Greg moaned against his throat. He knew Gil could feel it, the same way that Gil could feel him rocking steadily into his grip. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Love you. Want you. Always...."

No matter what else could go wrong, at least, at least he had Gil.He had Gil, just then, pulling back, sliding his hand off of Greg's cock just enough so he could hook a thumb over the edge of the elastic of his boxers. He wouldn't even have to pull them off -- gravity was going to give them a helping hand, while Gil tried to get Greg's shirt off of him. It wasn't fast enough for either of them, but at least Greg could be grateful of one thing. It hadn't been so long since the last time that they'd had sex sex that the condoms had expired, even if all they kept these days were the nifty Japanese kind with all of the special nubs and ticklers and things. Greg liked to play with those.

The boxers were lost before they got out of the living room, and the shirt was dropped on the bedroom floor. The bed was still a mess from where they'd gotten up earlier, but it wasn't so bad that they couldn't crawl right back into it. Gil paused at the edge of the bed, and kissed Greg again.

"Do you want to take your pills now, or after?"

As much as Greg hated to say it.... "Now. Then they'll kick in later."

Another kiss from Gil, slower, lips against lips until the wet friction made Greg want to squirm against the edge of the bed, just in the hope of bumping Gil with his penis and getting some pressure. Then Gil pulled back and told him, "I'll be back in a minute," before he turned to head back to the kitchen for milk to go with the drugs that he'd grab from the bathroom on the way back. He'd probably take his own, and then they could both sink into drugged out bliss after sex.

That sounded just about perfect. It was a good thing that neither of them had seriously addictive personalities; or, rather, that their addictions lent to the sort of thing that didn't fall under the title of 'Class 3 Narcotic'.

Carefully, Greg shifted himself into the bed, gently pushing Black Death up to lie on the pillows and arranging the covers so they could be pulled up easily later. If he had thought about it, he'd have grabbed the lube and a condom, just so that cleanup would be easier. Maybe Gil would.

Maybe Gil would forget and just not care. He'd definitely grab the lube, and he'd definitely think to have a washcloth at hand in the bathroom afterwards, but....

They probably needed to change the bedding anyway. Tomorrow, or whenever it would be that they woke up again.

Greg closed his eyes and sighed, listening to Gil move around and head back towards the bedroom. Those steady, rolling footsteps made him smile, made him strangely impatient for those moments after orgasm, when Gil curled up beside him and dozed off.

There was a glass of milk in one of Gil's hands, along with Greg's Loritab, and his antibiotics, and a quirk of his face as he moved to hand Greg the glass first, then the pills. It was almost a routine by now, except for the part where they were planning on more than just a quick blowjob before passing out.

Parts of Greg were tingling that he'd almost forgotten he even had.

He took the glass and his pills, watched as Gil measured out the liquid pain medication. Swallowing was easy enough; he had practice at that, anyway, and the thought made him grin as he squirmed slightly until he was comfortable, watching Gil take his own pills. He knew he had Gil's attention, but he waited to say it.

"I want to watch you get yourself ready for me," Greg said clearly, reaching down and giving his cock a hard squeeze to offset saying those words. Just the thought of Gil with his fingers up his ass was enough to make him spill all over the sheets much too soon. Then they'd be back in the living room trying option two -- bent over the coffee table -- and Greg loved bed. He liked to sit on the mattress and smell the detergent and just know he was in their bed and not a hospital bed or a hospital sofa, or anywhere else that he might've been instead.

"Half of what makes that hot is your face when you say it." Gil set bottles aside on the table, and opened the drawer beneath it to pull out the tube of lube. He gave it to Greg to held onto and play with in his hands while he started to unbutton his shirt.

Greg loved it when Gil said things like that. At the moment, it made him feel self-conscious, worried a little about what Gil might think of it later, but.... he wasn't going to be like that. It was going to be okay, because they'd make it all right, Greg thought, shoving that into the back of his head. He could worry over that later. For now, Gil was undressed and had a knee on the edge of the bed, and he was holding his hand out for the lube.

One day, he'd find out where Gil had learned to speed-undress. He was never going to get a strip tease or anything like that out of Gil, because Gil was weird about his scars, the curve across his stomach, the hole Millander had put in him, the holes that Dolarhyde had created in him. Gil hardly ever changed clothes in the locker-room, though maybe it wasn't for the same self conscious reasons that Greg guessed he might not ever do it again himself.

Gil probably just didn't want to answer questions, simple as that, and just then.... Gil wasn't going to get any questions, because he was leaning down and over to Greg, careful not to push him onto his back, careful not to jostle him, but careful to kiss over the edge of his un-bandaged cheek.

And then he had the lube.

Greg's eye burned from holding it open so desperately, afraid that he'd miss something. He didn't want to miss a thing, not a single, solitary movement, and that was going to be tough in the long run. God, though, seeing those fingers that usually moved so delicately get slicked up, watching as Gil slid them between his legs....

Greg squeezed again, breath hitching. "Fu-uck."

Just kneeling there, two fingers slick and Greg knew Gil was tracing for a minute, easing himself into it, and he wished he could see better. He'd need tunnel vision or to lie down between Gil's legs for that, though, and if he did that, he'd probably end up sucking his cock. That put them back at the fellatio thing, and what they wanted was s-e-x.

Greg decided not to ask about what qualified as 'strenuous activities' next time he went to see his doctor. It wouldn't be good for him to ask, he was pretty sure. "Gil?" He wished that Gil could hear him. "Put 'em in. Oh, God, put it.... yesssss...." It came out in a hiss, like Gil's breath.

Gil tipped his head back a little, swaying like he was going to lose his balance even as he did just what Greg wanted him to without having to hear it. Two fingers deep in his ass, and Greg could see his arm moving, could see the rise and fall of shoulder as Gil tried to work in the lube.

He knew that Gil couldn't see that, but he could see the way that his dick throbbed and bobbed with every motion of hips. He could see the twist of Gil's mouth, the way he was obviously enjoying it.

He could see the way that Gil looked at him when he opened his eyes.

"Oh, God, you're fucking gorgeous like that," Greg managed to say. He could feel himself trembling violently, wanting to reach out and touch, throw Gil on his back and fuck him with his knees around his ears, but he couldn't. He couldn't, not just because Gil would complain later about his back being thrown out, but because it might do something to the skin graft, and that was just a bitch.

Maybe he could ask his doctor about that, anyway. He had to find out when he could eventually go back to doing normal shit without having to think about it.

He could reach out and touch, though, maybe just lean up and put a hand on Gil's hip, connect to him a little while he finished getting himself ready. Greg could see Gil's body shiver a little when he pulled his fingers out, and then added more lube, could see the way that pleasure and smugness warred over Gil's face.

"God, I'm gonna come before you ever squirm your way down here," Greg moaned to himself, tugging a little to try and encourage Gil to hurry up. If he didn't, all that prep was going to be a lost cause. Gil closed his eyes for a moment, blocking Greg out while he worked that last bit in. When he pulled his fingers out again, he moved to lie down on his side in front of Greg, those same slicked fingers reaching back to grab onto Greg's penis again.

The slippery, heated touch made Greg gasp, brows drawing together tightly. Nothing felt half so good as Gil touching him, the way that Gil stroked, and then Gil shifted again. Greg could feel himself wedged between the cheeks of Gil's ass, Gil's hand trying to aim him despite the difficult angle. Instead of saying anything, he reached down and gently touched Gil's hand, pushing it out of the way and using his own.

Gil drew his hand back, grasped loosely onto Greg's hip, and used his knee for traction to shift closer back against Greg. They could communicate pretty well without words, and even if Gil wasn't talking, couldn't hear, there was still noise. The mattress squeaked and when Greg lined himself up against Gil, there was a low groan.

Carefully, Greg slid closer, breath hitching a little as something caught uncomfortably, but it wasn't too bad. It wasn't bad at all compared to the feel of his cock pushing at Gil's hole, head just starting to slip inside. He couldn't hold back the thick sound of his own groan, shuddering. So good.

So good.

He had to squeeze himself again when Gil shifted faintly, pushing back to get closer to Greg, tugging at his hip gently until he'd squirmed and moved back far enough. Far enough for Gil was until he was in deep, until Greg was in as far as he could get, until Gil shifted a leg back over Greg's so Greg had the best angle.

It was going to be almost impossible not to rabbit-fuck his way to completion and pass out cold. Still. Still. Greg reached out and slid an arm around Gil's waist, nuzzling slowly against the back of his neck. "So good," he groaned there, knowing Gil would feel it. "Ungh. So.... So...." He slid back slowly before pressing forward again, only his hips moving. "Unh...."

Somewhere in there, Gil's hand moved off of Greg's hip, and came to rest on top of Greg's hand, on top of the arm around his waist. "Fuck." Greg could guess where Gil's other hand was, and he could feel when Gil started to move counterpoint to Greg's shifts. It was almost slow, almost easy, except for the part where they were desperately worked up, and Greg was exploiting the sensitive spot at the back of Gil's neck, just to the left of his spine. Nuzzling there felt almost as good as thrusting deep in some strange way, holding still, feeling the clench of Gil around him. Sweetness and lust all gathered together, right and good, and God. God. Greg just wanted this every day, wanted to hold it all together so desperately that he could hear his own whimpers over the squelching sex noises. He could hear Gil's quiet moans, could feel Gil's arm tightening over the top of his, could feel Gil squeeze around Greg on purpose before his stomach went tight and he started to move back to Greg faster, a little harder.

Only Gil would be careful about not hurting Greg when he was the one getting fucked.

Only Gil, and Gil was all Greg could think about, all he could want, everything he wanted, and he'd give up whatever he had to keep him, to be allowed to keep on loving him, to have this. Greg groaned, a sound that broke in the center, and held on. So close. So close, strangest orgasm ever, half-drugged and all horny, and so desperate.

So desperate.

When he came back to himself a little, his own ragged breathing was giving way to something else. Gil was breathing hard, too, and he'd dragged Greg's hand up from his stomach and was kissing over his fingers, substituting touch with sound. That had been good and too needy and Greg wasn't sure when his shudder for air against the back of Gil's neck turned to something like crying.

He wasn't sure how he'd managed that. Somewhere in the middle, everything had gone all funny and sad, and it was good to be there, be in Gil, be close, but there were so many things that suddenly seemed so hard. So many things that he just couldn't put his finger on, not even when Gil shifted slowly and turned to face him, letting Greg hide his face in Gil's throat.

It was easy to shift at Gil's goading, moving on top of Gil while Gil laid back and held him, touched him where he could without pressing over the taped down swath of bandages on Greg's back.

"Shhh. Shhh. It's okay. It's okay." And 'shhh' was suddenly the funniest saddest thing Greg had ever heard. It made him laugh, and never mind that he was crying, and that it was stupid. He chuckled wetly against Gil's shoulder, closing his eye and catching his breath slowly.

"Sorry," he whispered. "Sorry."

Gil exhaled, fingers sliding carefully, gently through Greg's hair, rubbing a thumb at the dip where neck met skull and tension settled. "It's okay. You're okay, Greg. Just relax...."

Just relax. Just.... relax.

He didn't think he'd be able to, but he knew that the Loritab would be kicking in at any minute. Greg knew he'd feel better when he woke up.

Just relax.

He closed his eye and nuzzled close against Gil, his breath still hitching faintly.

He could do that.

Greg could....

* * *

Doctor's offices were usually annoying places to go. Gil hated sitting in the waiting room, looking at the serene walls and the old magazines, knowing that they were supposed to distract him from finding out what his fate was. It made him nervous and stomach twisted, the gnawing worry that the real reason he hadn't heard anything wasn't because of the protection padding his ears but because he'd gone completely deaf undeniable.

At least this particular visit he had more to keep himself busy than the hope that his pager would go off. Gil had Greg, and Greg was enough to keep any man occupied full-time.

Their time so far had been equally split between doctors' offices. They'd called a cab around eight, and headed in to get everything checked. Greg's skin graft had taken, and was doing well. The ophthalmologist they had seen after that had been pleased with the way Greg's non-eye was coming along and had done a few things before offering Greg a black eye-patch and telling him that once it was fully healed, they'd make appointments for plastic surgery if he wanted, and arrange for a prosthetic.

The words 'plastic surgery' had produced an almost imperceptible shudder, one that only Gil had noticed, but Greg hadn't said anything about it.

He'd ask Greg to explain later, if he could actually get a verbal answer, and if he couldn't hear, then it was something perhaps best tackled with pen and paper. Gil was getting better at lip-reading, but he still felt he'd missed a lot of information.

He hadn't missed that Greg wanted to get a whiteout pen so he could put a skull and crossbones over the eye patch, and that made Gil grin. "I think there's one in the office."

"Coool!" Greg had crowed, and they'd gone out to catch another taxi and head over to Gil's appointment. Now, they were sitting and waiting to find out how the surgery on Gil's ears had gone.

He was going to be lucky if he didn't throw up, he was so nervous. He couldn't even take the cotton out yet, because if the surgery did take, his ears were going to be sensitive, sensitive enough that the waiting room might prove skull-achingly hazardous.

Gil could only sit there, fingers clutched over Greg's hand, waiting for a nurse to call his name and for Greg to jerk, or for a nurse to come over to him and wave something in front of his face.

Greg tapped the back of his hand and smiled at him when Gil turned to look. They hadn't actually gotten around to talking about Greg's crying jag on Sunday, but Gil wasn't surprised so much. They'd been under a lot of stress, and Greg was generally very open about his feelings, the way he thought about things. Considering everything that had happened, add in the complication of his visiting mother, and finally having a moment of sheer physical gratification.... It just wasn't surprising.

The touch of paper on his hand caught Gil's attention, and he looked down to see Greg's handwriting. _WHEN'S THE APPOINTMENT, AGAIN? EXCITED._

Gil pulled a pen out of his pocket, clicked the end, and shifted to use his knee to bear down on.

 _Five minutes ago. If the clock on the wall is right._ He offered that back to Greg, knowing he looked nervous at the edges while Greg was excited. Maybe excited was code for 'I hope your appointments go as well as mine did and we can go back to being as normal as possible'.

Not that everything was going to be totally normal. Gil had decided to go out and get a bunch of plastic glasses and plates, put away their real ones for a while. Greg was having problems reaching for them, the monocularity of his vision knocking things out of perspective. If they didn't replace them, there wouldn't be any left. It wasn't the end of the world, or anything close to it. It was just a change that Gil was going to have to remember to make, because he didn't want Greg to look guilty and sad and angry every time he broke a glass. He didn't want Greg thinking about the problems he was going to have at work if he wasn't careful, and he didn't....

Didn't want Greg to stop smiling, didn't want him to be hurt because fate or luck or happenstance had decided to take something away from him.

IT'S ALL GONNA BE OKAY, YOU KNOW. :)

The little smiley at the end of the sentence made Gil's mouth curl upwards, and then Greg was poking at him, and pointing towards the nurse in the doorway where his name had obviously just been called.

Gil gave Greg the piece of paper, and started to stand up. He wasn't sure whether he could or should drag Greg back with him, or what the protocol was. Nervousness peaked, settled in his stomach, and then he just started walking. If Greg pulled back or the nurse made a face, then that would be his cue.

The nurse didn't say anything, though, and Gil figured that if he looked at Greg, he'd see a face more dead set to have his way than Gil had ever thought Greg could make. Determination was something that Greg showed on a regular day, so it wouldn't surprise Gil if the way his brows set had told the nurse right off that there was no way he was going to back up. It wasn't as if doctor-patient confidentiality was a concern of Gil's, and if dragging Greg with him was as close as he'd get to saying 'I'm scared', then so be it. The nurse put his chart in the box on the outside of the exam room door, and pointed into the room while she said something to Greg.

She probably didn't know sign, or didn't guess that Gil knew it. People were funny that way.

Greg signed at him as they stepped into the room, a quick 'I love you'. "It's going to be okay," he said visibly, and he took Gil's hand before shifting a chair beside the exam table so that they could sit close together.

Greg could lean in against Gil's leg sitting like that, and Gil wasn't going to let go of Greg's hand until and unless they ran a hearing test on him. That was something he was as familiar with as he was with how to start a car engine. Tones and beeps of certain levels, a test of range.

If he had a range to test, Gil was going to call it a miracle. He gave the simple gesture back with his free hand, and then let his eyes drift to the closed door hopefully.

Silence was more difficult to live with, Gil thought, than anything else. Maybe it was because he had feared it for so long; maybe it was because he had kept putting off the necessary appointments, and it might be too late. There were dozens of reasons that it terrified him, so it was important to see the doctor open the door.

"Hi, Dr. Grissom." The doctor, at least, understood how necessary speaking clearly could be. "And.... you are?" Gil couldn't see Greg's answer, but he could tell that he had.

"Ahhh. Okay. Let's start with getting all of that stuff out of your ears, why don't we?"

Gil inclined his head slightly, and then gave a full nod. "Please." Please, please let there be more than the buzz of tinitus that he'd gotten so used to, the garble of underwater noise. Please, let there be anything, so long as he could hear Greg's voice again, and music, and....

"Here we go." What was it about medical instruments? Was there some unknown reason that they all had to look so terrifying? Gil knew what they were; he'd used all of them before, after all, but that didn't mean that he liked knowing someone planned to use them on him.

He closed his eyes to the sight, and clutched at Greg's hand for a tense moment. He had to hear. He had to hear. It had to have worked, because he needed it to work. He didn't want to see those tools in use, even if it was just a hemostat pulling the probably faintly bloody batting out of his ear, because it made him think of work.

It made him think of all the things he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to do again if it hadn't.

"There we go."

There we go, and there was sound, thank God, there was SOUND. Gil let out a stuttered breath and relaxed.

It sounded strange, maybe a little too sharp, but there was sound, enough sound to make him sit back with relief. Oh, oh god. Now she just had to take the other one out but the left ear had sound.

It was such a relief to have something back that he'd already spent most of his life trying not to take for granted.

"It's okay." A week without Greg's voice had left him shuddering and afraid, lonely in a strange, intense sort of way that had been unexpected. Maybe he hadn't even realized it until that moment.

"You'll have to shift to the other side," the doctor told him, "so that I can get to his right ear."

"Oh, sure. No problem!"

Gil had to let go of Greg's hand for the moment, and he closed his eyes, basking in the relief that once more, loss of vision and loss of touch no longer meant that he was cut adrift from the world. He could hear Greg and the doctor doing the awkward dance of 'do I have to move? At least get out of my way so I can' where someone anticipated the other party's moves wrong.

Then Greg was at his other side, and Gil opened his eyes again. Now he was excited instead of feeling like he was going to throw up. "This is amazing...."

"You're probably going to gain back at least ten decibels over the next few weeks, probably more," his doctor went on as she started to remove the other batting. "But the intermittent hearing loss won't happen any more. I'll want you back in two weeks for follow up."

The first thing Gil realized was that he couldn't hear the batting being pulled out the way he had with the other ear.

"Gil?" That fact must have been obvious on his face, because Greg sounded soft, tentative, his fingers tightening around Gil's fingers. He was obviously worried; it couldn't be helped, Gil was sure, but Gil didn't want to say it. He was afraid to say it.

"There we go, Dr. Grissom. Okay. Let's take a look...."

Nothing. He could hear it in his left ear, but not his right. There was nothing there, no sound at all. Gil opened his mouth a little, then closed it, wondering if that qualified as a catastrophic failure. "I...."

Could only hear with one ear.

Just one.

That wasn't the way that things were supposed to be. The chances of getting osteosclerosis were less than 1%. The chances of surgical failure were the same.

Gil could only hear with one ear.

"Hey, hey, stop. Gil? Gil? You need to put your head down," Greg urged him. "You're white as a ghost!"

"I can't hear in that ear. My right ear...." It was stark silence, compared to the noise he now had with the other one. Gil had to close his eyes, because he wasn't sure he wanted to see Greg's face just then.

If he could've helped it, he would've found a way to keep himself from hearing the Doctor's comments on it, either.

"Outright surgical failure is rare...." Rare, and it obviously worried her, because she was prying into his ear with her otoscope. "Let's take a look here.... hmmm."

He didn't want her to hum. He wanted her to say that his hearing would be okay! Calm. He needed to stay calm -- he'd faced worse in his life, much worse, but there was something frighteningly damning about her thoughtful hmmm. "Was there any specifically noticeable pain...?"

"No more than the other. The dizziness wore off after a couple of days. I've been careful...."

"Hmmm...."

Anything. Anything but that sound, only half-heard at best.

"It'll be okay," Greg encouraged worriedly, and Gil wanted to snap. It wasn't going to be 'okay'. What was so okay about it?

He was half-deaf now. That was.... worse than it had been before, because at least before he'd been able to feign that he could hear properly all of the time. He'd have to disclose at work that he was half deaf, put it down in paper, it could be brought up in trial, it....

Gil closed his eyes tightly. He wouldn't snap at Greg. Not when Greg couldn't see properly. Biting back the urge to do it, though.... It was harder than he had thought. He knew he was being irrational, knew that everything seemed so deeply wrong in that moment that he couldn't quite see to the end of it.

Taking a deep breath, Gil managed to smooth out his features, stopping the wrinkle of brow he could feel, the sharp frown.

"Why don't we step out for a few moments?" the doctor suggested. "I want to run a few tests, schedule a scan of your inner ear.... If Mister...?"

"Sanders," Greg supplied.

"....Sanders would stay here, please."

Gil moved, got to his feet and pulled away from Greg. It was disorienting to hear, but.... not hear all at the same time, and while before he'd been waiting with excitement for the batting to be taken out of his right ear, now his stomach had sank.

"All right."

The troubled look on Greg's face said that he had wanted to go; but they were both becoming much too accustomed to listening when a doctor said something, so he settled back in his chair to wait.

"Come with me," the doctor said quietly, and stood with Gil's chart. Gil knew that there would be tests of his hearing, tests to see what had gone wrong and if anything was salvageable, and that Greg would worry while he was gone.

Gil couldn't quiet find it in himself to give Greg a smile as he headed for the door.

* * *

The kitchen was the same as it had been when they left it; bright, full of sunshine, a pale lemon yellow that gleamed, the tiles shimmering white. The toaster was still between the stove and the sink, the refrigerator sitting snugly in its place, and Gil couldn't hear in his right ear.

It had taken a couple of long worrying, boring, mind-racking hours for the doctor to reaffirm what Gil had shakily said a few hours before. Nothing. She'd even called it a catastrophic unexplained failure -- very rare -- and mentioned that she'd like to see Gil again in two weeks to check up on his left ear and to better document his right.

Gil had been pretty quiet on the taxi ride back, holding Greg's hand on the seat between them, listening to the crap music the taxi driver was playing, staring out the window occasionally. Now he was taking some of the coffee grounds left from Greg grinding them earlier, and it looked like he was going to make cappuccino. It was kind of ritualistic, but at least Gil was doing something, standing in the daylight bright kitchen when their combined sleeping patterns were telling them that it was way past time to be sleeping.

Things were kind of a mess, Greg decided while he watched for a minute with one eye. He had just one eye -- even if it was healing pretty well and the doctor seemed to believe that with the right prosthetic, no one would notice that he only had one. No one would notice that Gil could only hear from one ear. It wasn't a visible problem, not like the shaking of Greg's hands.

It had to be pretty traumatizing, all the same. Greg shuddered. It would have been all right if they had pulled the cotton batting out of the right ear first. Then, Gil wouldn't have had any hope for both ears working out. It was too late for that, though, and there wasn't any way to erase that stony expression on Gil's face, or if there was, Greg was having a kind of hard time thinking of how to do it. He wanted to fall over and go to sleep and then maybe talk and.... He didn't know what to say to Gil.

That usually wasn't a problem.

Gil turned a little, peered over at Greg for a moment, and finally said something. "How much sugar do you want in yours?"

"Couple teaspoons," Greg answered, watching him closely. There was a feeling, a bad one, like something was about to explode, and Greg wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

Gil frowned down at Greg's favorite coffee cup after he added sugar to the milk, and stirred it in. It had a handle, and it looked like Gil was only making half-coffee, so Greg would be able to sleep afterwards.

If something didn't go horribly wrong.

"Greg...." Gil glanced up, watching Greg's face when he didn't have to anymore. Or maybe he did have to watch Greg's face. He wasn't sure how only having one ear's worth of hearing worked. "Are you all right?"

Funny. That was the question that Greg wanted to ask him. "Just worrying about you. I mean.... I wish she had taken the cotton out of the right ear first. Then maybe.... it wouldn't have been so upsetting. That sounds stupid, you don't have to tell me, just.... I'm worried about you is all."

The edge of Gil's mouth pulled up to something like a smile, sharp at first, and then it gentled. He flicked the espresso maker on, and added sugar to his mug, turning away. "Actually, I probably would've had a heart attack if she'd taken the right one out first."

"Mmm." That was something to smile about. Maybe Gil wasn't going to take it as badly as he thought. Maybe Greg was mistaken about that look. "At least it worked on one ear. That's something...."

"I can talk to you. I can.... hear you, Greg. I hadn't realized quite how important hearing you is to me." Gil's back straightened like he was steeling himself, and he fiddled with the nozzle on the milk-frother. "I can function like this. I'm just.... not sure how this is going to work in the field."

After all, it was easy enough to hear when it was just the two of them in the house, when things were silent and mellow.

"We'll work on it." Always we. Always, because that's the way things were, the way that they should be, Greg thought. "I mean there must be ways to compensate. You're the best at what you do, Gil. There's nothing that can make that less than the truth."

He turned back, peering at Greg from the corner of his eye before he started to wait for the coffee to have dripped to the 'steam' line. "Do you think you're going to be able to do your work when you go back, Greg?"

Greg glanced down, watching his fingers tremble. He didn't want to think about it. It was easier to worry about Gil than it was to think about himself, or how hard it would be to work in the lab when his hands shook uncontrollably and he couldn't exactly use the microscopes anymore. "Mm." Noncommittal sound, so he guessed he'd have to give an answer. "Maybe. If I get my hands under control." And if everybody else did their own scope comparisons.

"We're working with a lot of ifs," Gil said carefully, like he was suggesting something more than just 'if'. Then he was leaning in to fiddle with the steam knob, and Greg kind of wondered if Gil could hear him while the milk bubbled and frothed up loudly. "There's a possibility that I'm worried for no reason at all, and that we'll both be able to do our jobs just fine."

"A very good possibility," Greg agreed. "I'd think it would be more of one in your case than mine." It would be. There were dangers inherent in being a CSI, but having sharp eyes and steady hands would be the key. Hearing in one ear would be enough, Greg hoped. Gil was quiet for a little while more, not trying to shout over the steam when he finished frothing both mugs up. Then he turned the machine off. "I.... just wanted to apologize for...." He gave a sigh, and gestured a little helplessly before he picked up the carafe and poured both mugs. "I don't know what to do."

"I suggest sleeping on it." Smiling wasn't easy, but Greg managed it anyway. "You're due back at work in another day or so. Let's try and get back into rhythm. That's probably the best starting point." That and a few meds. Greg was pretty sore.

"That involves setting an alarm clock to go off in five hours, Greg." Gil had the half-coffee in hand now, and half-tucked Greg's mug into his hand for him. His fingers folding over Greg's felt good, steadying. "Are you up to trying to come back Friday night?"

Terrifying thought.

Still, if Gil was going to go back Wednesday night, then Greg might as well give a damn fine shot at bravery. Never mind the fact that Gil hadn't filled his cup as full as he used to. "I'll give it a shot if my boss says I can lie down on the couch in his office if my back starts hurting too much," he smiled.

"Conveniently enough, your boss is more than willing to let you avail yourself of his office couch. I happen to have an inside line to the man." Gil almost smiled, and leaned in to kiss Greg carefully, like he wasn't sure what Greg's reaction was going to be.

"If you're not going to let me panic about going back to work, I can't allow you to do it, either."

Perfect. That was perfect, and Greg hoped that the way he kissed Gil back said as much. "Okay. Then I'll try coming back on Friday." Maybe he'd find a way to keep his hands under control by then. "You gonna help me whiteout the skull on my patch before we go?"

"Sure." Gil leaned into him, somehow balancing the mug of milky coffee as he got an arm around Greg's waist. "We should make a stencil for it."

That made Greg relax, as if that was all he needed to hear. "That sounds perfect. We can do that after we take a nap and get up in five hours," he decided firmly.

Gil nodded, still leaning into Greg. They weren't exactly moving, and Gil seemed a little off still -- off, but trying to be normal, trying to be like everything was okay and he wasn't worried. He sighed against Greg's mouth, kissed him again, and then just stood there cheek to cheek with Greg like he was trying to put something together in his head or his heart.

He'd done that when Jack was there, when Jack had been waving possibilities and madness at Gil. "Okay."

"Okay." Because it had to be.

It really did. It had to be.

* * *

The world was off-kilter.

Perhaps it wasn't the world so much as it was Gil, but it seemed like everything was one-sided, and he only heard half of what went on around him. It was driving him crazy. Covallo had looked shocked, then stumped, then reluctantly accepting at the news; Gil could tell that there were probably going to be new rules and guidelines heading out of his office sometime soon, probably aimed at one Gil Grissom.

He wasn't sure what ways Covallo was going to try to subtly undercut him, but he was sure that it would happen, probably in a way over which Gil couldn't threaten action. It didn't seem possible just then, but it was probably in the works.

The day was already starting early, a call in because there was a dead detective. Jim had called it right when he'd said there was never a good time to kill a cop.

He could hear his CSIs coming up behind him, murmuring. "I heard 'officer down'," Sophia said. "I didn't know it was Lockwood."

Everything sounded off, not quite right, but it was better than nothing. Half-deaf was better than completely deaf, right?

Warrick sighed. "I wonder what he was doing here. He's supposed to be off-duty."

"He was only thirty-four, man." Gil could almost see Nick shudder. "That's way young, you know?"

Way way young when you were almost that age. People never wanted to think of themselves as old -- Gil could see Nick at sixty saying 'it's way young', and that made him want to smile faintly even if the noise from outside was leaking and making it hard to hear and concentrate. "All right, good. All here? We've got a lot of work to do," Catherine announced from a few feet away, the sound muffled since she was standing on his right side.

"We do -- split up, claim what you cover and get everything. I'll take the vault -- Sophia, you're with me." The rest of them would partner themselves up with whomever they worked best, meander around themselves, fill the room with noise.

In the vault, there would only be one voice to handle.

"I'll take the radio car," Nick offered, giving a boyish grin as he headed in that direction. Nick had an unexplainable love for cars. Maybe it was something Gil didn't get because of his age, but he was pretty sure that it might be a California guy thing. Greg didn't seem to have it, either, at least insofar as wanting to dig into the engine and do things with it.

"Got the cameras," Warrick called, and Gil turned to walk away with Sophia, knowing that his crew would take care of business.

He wondered how Greg was doing. There were a few possibilities for what he was doing -- sleeping, watching tv, playing games, or masturbating. Reading, possibly, surfing the internet. Trying to relax and prepare himself for coming to work on Friday was almost certainly on Greg's agenda.

Gil flicked on his flashlight, standing in the door of the vault for a moment, knowing Sophia was behind him.

"Very interesting," she noted, eyes taking in the complete wreckage of the safety deposit boxes. "So. What do you think they were after? There's money on the floor, I see some obviously expensive jewelry...."

"'True riches cannot be measured in terms of money.'" Gil stepped forward carefully, picking his way through the debris to let Sophia in to start processing. "Clearly, our perpetrators weren't going for the gold."

Lifting her camera, Sophia started to snap off shots, quick and bright. "Yes, well. What they weren't after is obvious. What they were.... well. That's an entirely different story."

"That's why we're here." Gil crouched, getting low and to the floor. His balance was a little off, but that was apparently expected with a catastrophic surgical failure. Which supposedly never happened often.

He leaned forward, hand going down to brace himself against the dizziness. It was luck that he brushed against the very thing he'd been looking for. "And we have an electric blasting cap. They didn't want to be in the room when their device went off."

"Neither would I. Interesting pattern for the explosion, though -- four corners," Sophia noted. "Whatever they were looking for was definitely in the center, so.... why don't we start by putting things back together? I'm sure there's a list of who owned what box...."

They'd probably have to subpoena it, and then hunt down the owners to find out what was in their box. Gil shifted, scanning the debris that they'd have to piece together shortly. It would disturb the scene a little, so he was going to delay that for just a minute longer....

"I just found the detonator."

"Why don't we take that and get it fumed for fingerprints, then?" Sophia murmured, looking at him.

* * *

Four in the afternoon.

Four in the afternoon was not the time to be lying in bed alone when they worked night shift. Four in the afternoon was, in fact, making Greg's teeth grind together. He had tried to make Gil promise him that he wouldn't rush things; that he would come home when he got tired. The surgery on his ears was only a week past. It wasn't like he needed to be working double shifts already. Worse, Greg didn't sleep worth a damn without him. That meant that he'd be nearly black-eyed with exhaustion by the time Gil went to work, and if he worked a double shift Thursday night the way he had Wednesday night-cum-Thursday morning, then Greg wasn't going to be worth a shit in the lab Friday night.

He was already pretty sure he wasn't going to be worth a shit, anyway.

He'd tried hard, tried every calming thing he could think of, tried massage and hot baths and just fucking everything short of acupuncture, and his hands would not steady out. If he concentrated he could do it for a little while, and it wasn't a problem with day-to-day shit. It was the little things that got him, and his job consisted of little things. It scared him. What was he going to do if he couldn't be the lab tech, and flirt with everything that walked by, and break cases?

The keen that broke his throat scared him; he hadn't expected to make that sound, and if Gil had come home, he wouldn't have had so much time to think about it. He wouldn't have gotten scared. There was no Gil, though, just himself and Black Death. Nothing was working, and he could feel his hands shaking even as he desperately plunged them underneath the covers.

If he didn't have to look at it, it wasn't real.

It wasn't.

He'd, he'd manage. Maybe if he were alone he'd go home and tuck his tail between his legs, and.... he didn't know. Greg couldn't even predict what he would've done if there hadn't been Gil except that leaving wasn't an option and Gil was a mess, too, and....

It made Greg's head hurt and his hands shake worse, edged with angry exhaustion. Hearing the front door open was a relief, so much that he let out a harsh breath and reached up to rub at his eyes.

Thank God.

"Gil?" he called, trying to keep the sound of fear and sorrow from welling up in his voice. "That you?" It couldn't be anybody else, unless....

Okay, yeah, Greg wasn't going to think about that. It would just creep him out if he did.

"It's me. You're still up...?" He could hear Gil set his kit down in the foyer closet, and then close the door. Locks, hearing locks and the little beep boop beep of the alarm system was good, too.

Hearing Gil come into the room, looking worn out and dead on his feet, was still better. "Officer Lockwood was killed."

"Lockwood?" Oh. That explained the double shift, then, even though Greg didn't want to accept it as an explanation. He blinked repeatedly, shaking his head. "Nice guy. Didn't know him very well."

Maybe if he kept his hands between his knees, Gil wouldn't notice how bad they were.

"He was shot in the back during a bank robbery," Gil went on as he toed his shoes off and took his jacket off. It ended up on the floor, and Gil's sunglasses fell off the bedside table, and he didn't stop to pick them up for a minute. "Protecting a mother and her child. The robbers didn't take money, they.... took one lock box."

"So that's what you were working on," Greg said, snuggling closer to the pillows and Black Death. "I was kind of getting worried." Understatement of the year, that, but it wasn't any surprise. It was different when it was someone familiar, someone who dropped by the office or went out on cases with the CSIs. No wonder. "Bet everybody's pretty keyed up."

Gil pulled his shirt up over his head, and then started to undo his belt, moving faster than usual like he wanted to get close to Greg quick. "He was collateral -- he wasn't even a target. It...."

It had obviously upset him, so Greg wasn't going to make Gil feel bad that he'd been left alone so long, that Gil had stayed and worked when he should have been at home resting, still. "We'll find them."

"We will. We...." Gil pulled the sheets back, looking at Greg tiredly. "I'm sorry. I should have called, I'll try to keep better track of time tonight."

"'s okay." It wasn't, but he'd live. "Just come in. Tired." It was hard to sleep without Gil, because if Gil wasn't there, then he dreamed, and his dreams were all full of fire and glass these days. It was hard to sleep -- and that, those horrible dreams, made him wonder if that was how Gil 'slept' when Greg wasn't there.

"How are you...?" The mattress squeaked a little, and Gil slid beneath the sheets, arms moving to slide around Greg.

"I'm okay." It was a lie, but it wasn't meant to be a bad one. It was just meant to soothe Gil, make it okay when it wasn't. "Now that you're here." Okay, so he couldn't lie worth a damn and he had to add a qualifier. So what? "I'll get to go with you in another night. That'll be better."

Or worse.

Or worse, and Gil sensed that. Shifted until he was tight pressed against Greg, bundling him close, bare skin to bare skin. "If you can't do it, we'll figure it out. I.... had unforeseen problems today. Maybe it was too long a shift...."

"You probably should have come home earlier," Greg agreed. His hands were still tucked tightly away, and he was afraid that Gil would notice it. If he did, would he let Greg go back to work? It was important that he did, even though hiding it sucked. "But it's okay. Tough day. 'mere."

Gil's face was a little scratchy, stubbly, when he pressed closer to Greg, turning his head to kiss him. "Gladly." Gil still sounded a little shaken, so it probably wasn't the best time for Greg to be entertaining the suggestion that they just stay in bed forever.

Gil might just go along with it. Weirder shit had happened.

"Hmmmm." Oh, that was nice, sweet kisses that wandered across his cheek, let Greg close his eyes and relax finally. Finally. There was something about Gil being home just now that made everything better. Almost everything.

"We should both sleep. I'll set the alarm a little later...." Run towards almost late, but that was a kind of trade that was worth it for extra sleep, right? Gil didn't move away to reset the alarm clock, though. He shifted a hand down along Greg's nearest arm, reaching for his hands.

It made Greg wish he'd been doing something sexy with them instead of trying to crush them still.

"I'm okay," he said again, and he knew it was useless. "Gil. I...."

Greg let him have his hands, eye cutting down and away so that he didn't have to see the look on Gil's face. What if it was pity, or worse, regret? He couldn't face that.

He couldn't.

He could feel Gil's hand touch his, and then shift, clutching light. Gil's other hand stayed under his good side, a palm curling low against Greg's back, but his fingers twitched with life suddenly. The hand that Gil was holding onto, though, was gently pulled up between the, Gil's fingers covering the back of his. "Greg...? Look at me, Greg."

Despite himself, Greg brought his eye up to Gil's face. He didn't want to look; it hurt to think about. He hadn't wanted Gil to feel his hands shaking like that. "Hm?"

There wasn't pity or regret that he could see in Gil's eyes, which was almost a relief. There was just determination on Gil's expression, and he gently squeezed Greg's hand for a moment. "It's okay not to.... be okay, Greg. Please don't lie to me, though."

Greg gave a raw sound and pressed his face against Gil's arm. "You were gone, and I couldn't.... it was just hard to sleep. And the worse it got...." The more his hands shook. Greg was never going to be some bastion of secrets -- not from Gil, anyway. He spilled everything to him easily, naturally, and maybe that was the way things should be. "Oh. God. I'm sorry."

Gil's hand curled, pressed against his back gently, and he kept holding Greg's hand in his other. He leaned in just a little more, and Greg couldn't have seen Gil's face even if he did lift his head. "Don't apologize. I just want to know when things are too much for you."

The sigh Greg gave shook faintly, and then he hummed against Gil's throat. "Just.... need to sleep," he offered. He hoped it was true. "Like I said. It's hard without you." Difficult to sleep, to keep from worrying....

Lips brushed against his temple, and Gil's muscles relaxed faintly. "It's hard to sleep without you, too. So just relax...." Relax, settle in, and snooze. It would get a little warm to sleep like that after a while, but it would help Greg fall asleep, and that was important.

Greg wished he could get more than a few hours of rest before Gil had to get up to start the day all over again. Maybe next shift would be better. Maybe Gil would come home on time. Maybe everything would work out, and Greg would be in a fit state to at least try going back to the lab the next day.

He wondered how long it would be before Covallo found a reason to fire him. They'd manage. We. There was a 'we', and if Covallo shuffled his job off, he'd manage, find something else to do that was nightshift-ish or maybe Gil could try to switch to days or.... or something.

Gil sighed, and shifted just a little closer to Greg, still soothing Greg's shaky hand.

* * *

Another day, another dollar.

Another day, another double shift, and Greg's hands were shaking while he tried to work in the lab. He should have told Gil that he didn't think he could manage coming in to work, not without sleep, not the way the last two days had gone. On the other hand, days like that were going to happen. Greg had to get used to that, he had to know that it was going to happen and that he wasn't always going to have Gil when and how he wanted him.

Knowing that didn't help a lot.

At least they were on the same schedule at last, and Gil had left his office door unlocked so Greg could crash on the sofa even if he was out. It was a big case, and Greg knew that mentally: a big, important case, and a trail of bodies that didn't seem near to stopping. Every time a suspect popped up, it was because he was dead and had been dumped.

So, rob a place for a sealed box, kill a cop, and then one by one clean up the people who could talk. It was a distracting thing for Greg to turn over in his mind while he worked, while he struggled to get his hands to hold still.

Catherine had asked him if he could do her a favor off the record.

He could manage that; it wasn't a problem, although it would have been better if she had asked for that 'off the record' favor three or four weeks ago. Then, his pipette wouldn't be shaking desperately as he counted the drops of salt solution going into the test tube, and he wouldn't be scared that he was going to miss something.

"So. You're back already." Hodges. Hodges was such a bitch. Greg was mostly amused by that, in a weird sort of way.

"Yup."

Hodges wasn't looking at Greg's hands, and that was the only thing Greg was worried about. "Wow. Willows really did a number on you. Did you put that skull and crossbones there yourself?"

"With a little assistance and a stencil," Greg said proudly. That had been a lot of fun, before Gil's stint of mad double shifts. Greg had sucked him off by way of saying thank you, and he was wishing at the moment that he'd gotten to do it just once since then. The 'weekend' was coming, though, their overlapping three days that weren't perfectly matched. Gil had a day off, but he'd probably be on call anyway, and since Greg worked that day, he tended to take calls and cover people's shifts. Gil said it was easier on him to do that, or work on some article or another, than it was to try to sleep and laze the way that Greg liked to try to do on his 'alone' days off.

So maybe they'd get time to relax and have fun and just be, very soon. That hopeful fact was probably the only thing keeping Greg going.

"Yeah? It looks.... well, it looks like what I'd expect you to do. You need any help in here? It's slow in trace today."

Greg finished with his pipette before turning his eye sharply to look at Hodges. "THAT slow?" he asked, raising a brow. "Pretty impressive. I thought they had some kind of fiber you were working on?"

"Silk, multicolored fabric, but sadly no juicy details that I can give the boss. Sometimes there's nothing to trace. But you've got DNA from it to do, don't you?" The trace tech's face was twisted into a little moue. He was a brownnoser by nature, but not the kind that Greg couldn't stop dead in his tracks.

"I've pretty much got it under control," Greg lied, giving a halfhearted smile. "Have to get back into the habit now, or it'll be harder to do it later. Thanks for the offer, though." After all, he was done with the scarf, and was in the middle of comparing Catherine's DNA to the results.

He was still good, just shaky, and maybe that was all right. Maybe it was just him being scared and self-conscious. After all, the dayshift guy wasn't as fast as he still was, or half as accurate, and he had two eyes and no shaking hands.

"Oh, yeah. Sure. Of course." Hodges stepped back a little, but he sounded like he was fishing. He thought he could fish around Greg for information, had tried to do so ever since he'd come to Vegas and had decided that the guy that was sleeping with the boss had to have loose lips about everything going on in the department.

Showed what he knew.

"Hey, so. Tell me what's been going on while I was gone. Bobby still dating that deputy from Henderson?" Greg asked, working as quickly as his hands would let him. It wasn't so bad, was it? Catherine could give the microscope a glance when she came in to see the results, the age of the blood on fabric.

Maybe he could go through the old supply shelves and look for a low-tech monocular microscope. He knew there had to be one in there, or maybe Gil would know where it was stashed. Then he'd be able to peer at things before he put them onto the fancy ones so everyone else could see.

That was kind of cool, right? His own personal microscope, and maybe he could take a label-maker and stick 'Greggo's' on the side. Or maybe even 'arrggh, mateys!'.

"No, she kicked him to the curb faster than a stray dog. I actually found that interesting, since he's hardly spent any time on the clock and moping."

"Bobby's not the kind of guy to mope," Greg declared, slipping his tubes into the centrifuge and balancing them with equal amounts of water on the other side. "Some people just don't, I guess, and Bobby's not the kind of guy to have something else on the side."

"Did I even imply that?" Hodges scoffed, and shifted back a little. "I can't believe that you'd say that, but I am glad that you're back. It might improve Grissom's mood."

"Yeah, well, it's been a tough few weeks," Greg said carefully. "I mean, the lab blew up on our shift. That doesn't look good."

Hodges leaned back on a filing cabinet, gaze drifting over towards his own workspace -- probably in the hopes that some CSI would be looking for him and he could do something. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Why?" Greg blinked, frowning. "The lab blew up, I blew up, the last few weeks have been pretty tough. Lockwood died. I'd be grumpy."

"There we go." Hodges was smiling slyly now. "Thank you. The boss? Was not the most pissed off impatient CSI I've ever had to deal with because the building blew up. It was because you.... blew up, as you put it. It's cute how professional you two try to be."

"Gee, thanks," Greg offered, rolling his eyes. "Personal and professional are separate, you know. That's just the way things are." Still, it was nice to know that everybody thought he was the reason Gil was grumpy.

Maybe that would keep them from talking about his hearing loss.

"Uh-huh. Just like no one ever treats a case special, or gets emotionally involved or...." Hodges rolled his eyes, and shifted away from the cabinet. "Any of the thousand other supposed rules that get broken every day. Hey, it was great to chew to the fat with you, but it looks like someone finally has work for me."

"Hope it's a doozy," Greg murmured, and he was glad that Hodges was leaving. Maybe he'd manage to find that single-eye microscope now that he was gone without having to hover too close to Catherine's off-the-record project.

It wasn't like anyone would ask him what he was processing, and he hadn't asked her why, but he could kind of guess that she was trying to work out if the perp was a relation to her, or maybe the victim. She'd been vague, but.... Murder was messy, and he already knew there was female blood and male blood in the samples Gil had gotten out of the lock box the day before -- the male an unknown, but the female was one Vivian Verona, dead cocktail waitress.

So it was just time to let Catherine's little project run, and poke around for that microscope.

"Hey! Greggo!" Nick poked his head in the DNA lab, grinning. "Good to see you back, man. I was startin' to wonder if you'd ever come back around here."

"Ah, yeah, well, I was just about to do some searching for a monocular microscope. Wanna help?" Greg asked, smiling.

Nick grinned back, the kind of look that used to make Greg wonder if Nick was lying when he gave that hookers versus Greg argument. Not that it made him wonder anymore -- sometimes people just flirted. After all, Greg still did, or he had before he'd gotten blown up, and he hadn't gotten into the swing of things enough yet to see if he still did it. "Yeah, hey -- I think there's one up on the top storeroom shelf, you know, toward the back wall...?"

"Oh, hey, cool!" That wasn't in the lab, though, and he didn't want to leave his sooper-sekrit results lying around, or even the components. "When I'm done with this, let's go look? What were you wanting, anyway? Before I commandeered your assistance."

"Oh, I just wanted to drop by, say 'hey, good to see you' and ask if you want to go in on the takeout order for lunch break," Nick grinned.

"Oooo, take-out. What kind?" Greg asked, seriously considering it. "I've had this huge _need_ for Mongolian Beef lately. Gil complains about the smell if I bring it home...." Coming from Gil, that was damned funny. It was a little fun to tease Gil that there was anything he didn't like the smell of when he was so amazingly bland about the usual crime-scene reeks.

"And a side of rice?" Nick asked, pulling a little notepad from his back pocket.

"Chicken fried," Greg agreed. "With all of those little peas and the corn, you know? Hey, you guys are going to Chen's, right? If they've got fried cheese, with the sweet and sour sauce.... you know, wrapped up in the won-tons? The stuff they do with the pineapple? I want a double order of that, too, and some panko crusted cheesecake. Gil's been cooking stuff that's good for me." So that he'd put on a little weight, and stop being so bony-hipped post-hospital stay. "My cholesterol's gotta be on the droopy side by now."

Funny, because he preferred yogurt and fruit or ice-cream, but damn. Sometimes, a guy had to have something _really_ bad for him. It wasn't as if Gil was going to protest, either. If Greg ate, he'd be happy with his beef and broccoli and fortune cookies and not say a thing about cheesecake or anything else. He might just sneak some off of Greg, maybe.

"Yeah? How the hell did that happen?" Nick scribbled all of that -- or maybe a note to steal Greg's credit card -- down on the pad. "Shouldn't take too long. It's not like traffic is bad right now."

"Then take off, man. You need money?" Greg reached back for his wallet. "How many of us are there, anyway? Did you talk to Gil?" God, it was great to be back at work.

"Gil got a requisition form," Nick grinned as he headed for the door of Greg's little space. "Whole team. I guess he thinks we need a working lunch."

"Hot damn!" That was the best thing ever, and now he was almost done with Catherine's stuff, so.... "Hurry back. I'm starving." Hodges would bitch later because Greg got to do stuff with Gil and the other CSIs, but that was just the way things were. Part of it was that DNA was pretty important to any given case they worked on these days; part of it probably _was_ that he slept with Gil. A lot of it was that Gil knew Greg was curious about what went on outside of his lab.

Greg had volunteered to do things with the CSIs, too. Gil had sworn up and down that Greg had done a good job when he'd helped on the bus case. Gil, for all accounts and purposes, was probably willing to steer Greg into fieldwork if he ever showed the urge to do it.

"I'll be back in twenty!"

"Great!" Greg's mouth was already watering, because he had missed those crazy cream cheese and pineapple fried wonton things. He decided that the monocular microscope could wait, and went to work finishing things up for Catherine. He could get to the microscope later -- it wasn't like it was going to hop off the shelf -- and his Sekrit project was way more important. Twenty minutes wasn't too long to wait for feeling like he was normal again.

Instead, he went back to work. The centrifuge was done, and if he hummed to himself, then he'd be distracted until his stomach growled at him or he smelled food, either one. It was a pretty good deal, he figured, and if he finished before Nick got back, then maybe he could spend five minutes on the couch in Gil's office. Maybe if he was lucky, he could steal a kiss or two. Gil didn't usually go for that, but it couldn't hurt today.

Gil had been a little looser lately, a little more tender than usual, because it was probably what he guessed Greg needed. Maybe what they both needed, and it wasn't about asking, it was about giving freely, so it wasn't too wrong if Greg wanted, hoped that Gil would give him a few kisses on the sly. The worst that could happen would be Covallo catching them at it, and Greg was feeling pretty secure in his skills after starting earlier in the evening. He could do this. He could still do his job, and be damned good at it. If his hands stopped shaking, he'd be almost as fast as before, and that was enough to make him limp with relief. Even if he didn't get his hands to stop shaking, he reminded himself, he was still faster than the dayshift guy. So he'd have a little less time to play around -- he could still work.

Life seemed full of hope and happiness again, and the smell of cheap Chinese takeout.

Greg's stomach gave a full-fledged twitch as he pulled his result sheet out of the printer and promptly locked it in his desk drawer. There were a few melty CD cases in there that he didn't look at too hard, and then he shucked off his lab coat and headed towards the smell of food. Catherine was in there already, helping Nick sort the food into piles, and Sophia came up behind him with a bottle of water.

"Hey, Greg -- long time, no see!"

"Oh, hey, I wanted tea," Greg said, frowning. "Forgot. Eh. I'll live." He rubbed his hands together. "Feed me, Seymour!"

"Seymour isn't feeding you, Greg. The department is." Tackling Gil on the meeting room table would a) get him fired and b) pull at his back in Very Bad Ways, so he was going to try hard not to do that.

"I still wouldn't get my hand in between him and his Mongolian beef," Warrick laughed. He leaned over Nick for a moment, and snagged his pre-packed boxes of food before he moved to claim a seat.

"Okay, I've got Sophia's food, Catherine's snagged hers, Griss, your--" Gil reached into the fray to take his two boxes and head for the head of the table. "Yep, and that leaves me here, and that there is yours, Greg." Conveniently placed in front of the chair just to Gil's left.

Greg couldn't help the deep sigh as he settled into the chair and closed his eyes for just a moment. Sitting down felt good, and the smell of Chinese felt better. He hadn't realized how hungry he was. "Oh, my God, I love mongolian beef...." Loved it, but popped one of the wontons in his mouth instead. He couldn't keep the moan from popping out. "Thash sho goooo."

Nick laughed. "Aw, man. That's so wrong of you."

"It's nice to see him enjoying his food," Sophia answered, nudging Nick slightly. "From the looks of it, we should be feeding him more often."

"It's not my fault!" Greg protested. "Honest! Gil's been feeding me twice as much as usual."

Warrick swallowed a noise that was suspiciously like laughter, but Gil bore it with perfect serenity, smiling faintly as he opened his rice. "There's a possibility that he's been hiding it in his sneakers."

No point in talking with his mouth full, Greg figured, opening up his beef and looking around for something to eat it. Gil had eyeballed him once when he had used a fork, as if he'd committed a grave sin, and since then, Greg had been trying to learn to use chopsticks. Nick knew that, so he had to have....

Ahhh, there it was. Greg grinned, and grabbed up his 'training' sticks. "Cool." Yeah, now he could eat. "Mmmmm."

Gil was smiling at him slyly, and lifted his coffee cup up to his mouth as he sat back with his own chopsticks in hand. There was a poor broccoli flowerette being held captive that didn't know how close it was to doom.

"Since we're all conveniently here.... Who has results?"

"I got nothing," Warrick offered with a grimace. "We've been trying to follow up on the information Bobby got off the bullet, but it's like spitting in the wind." He shrugged. "Pretty useless."

"Yeah, and there wasn't anything in the driver's place that actually led much of anywhere except back to Sam Braun," Nick said.

"Mmmph." Greg swallowed and poked around in his Mongolian beef a little more.

"Who we know will deny everything. The people who did this were professionals," Gil went on. "They worked fast, they had a plan, they knew whose box they were supposed to claim and there was something in it that was bloody. Greg, did you get anything back on that blood...?"

"From the Rubio residence?" Greg munched a little more, and then swallowed. "Yeah. One unknown, but the primary sample belongs to Vivian Verona, a cocktail waitress who was killed on the top floor of the old Pike's Gambling Hall about two years ago. I've got the report and the crime scene photos for you back in the lab."

"Whatever made you think to open up the remote and try fingerprinting it?" Sophia asked, rooting in her sweet and sour chicken with a fork.

"Whim? It's not as if they're manufactured ready-made for blowing up safety deposit boxes." Gil gave a little wave with his chopsticks, thankfully not yet stuck onto another piece of meat.

" _And_ we'd pretty much run out of evidence at that point," Warrick added.

"Except for that eyelash," Greg offered. "The one in the face paint? That got me...." He turned his sadly empty box over and shook it. "....Mongolian beef."

"Mongolian beef?" Catherine asked, both brows rising with amusement. "I'm sorry. What does that mean?"

Warrick popped a water chestnut into his mouth. "Means he got nothing."

".... and inhaled his food," Gil noted, peering dubiously over at Greg. It made him want to laugh, or smirk at Gil, or something, but he did have other food to eat that wasn't Mongolian beef. "But now we have a suspect and a cold trail. We're out of evidence until Brass or one of his men bring Rubio in."

"Maybe we'll trip over a stroke of good luck," Nick suggested. "I mean, once you figure out the evidence, there's a pretty clear trail...."

"Yeah, but the question is, interpretation," Greg pointed at Nick with his training-wheel chopsticks. "Which is why we've got jobs."

"The evidence leads us to a cold murder case, and a missing ex-military man who can fire thirty caliber rounds. We unfortunately can't do anything until Brass...." Gil trailed off, shaking his head slightly. Greg could tell that if there was a way that they could be out there looking themselves, they'd be doing it instead of taking a break. "Or we find more bodies."

"Let's hope that doesn't happen," Sophia sighed. "The way they've been turning up, though, I expect we'll have quite a few more soon. Just when you think there have been enough people killed...."

"Somebody kills one more." Greg reached for a fork to eat his rice. Gil could eat it without one, but the stuff still fell all to pieces when Greg did it.

"It's a spree," Gil ventured. "If they were hired, the less people there are to talk about the job, the less chance of the boss being fingered for it. If...." Gil paused to chew a glob of rice that was defying gravity.

"All roads keep leading to the Rampart?" Nick added. "The evidence kinda points to Braun."

The expression on Catherine's face was pained. "Yeah. It's pretty much a solid lead straight to Sam Braun."

Greg looked at her, and then glanced at Gil and popped another fried cheese into his mouth. "Mshmumau," he said, and hoped that Gil would get it.

"We have to go with what the evidence says. It implies one thing, but there's implication and then there's proof. We don't want to go to court against Sam Braun with a missing gunman and--"

Gil's pager started to vibrate, and he stuck his chopsticks into the rice while he glanced down at it. "Catherine? We have a triple."

A triple. Fuck.

Greg was aware that most of the table was avoiding looking at him, probably because he had visibly wilted. Dammit. No sleep again. Maybe if he asked nicely, Nick would let him sleep at his place, or come over and at least let him fall asleep with somebody in the bed.

"Let's go."

* * *

It was going to take Nick a while to work through in his mind how he'd gotten where he was just then. After all, it wasn't many a man who found themselves in bed with another guy when they were completely straight.

Nick was secure in his manhood. Yep, secure as a bank that was gunna get broken into on a day that he hit the overtime wall and was told to go home at the end of just one shift. Grissom had been firm about it, and for a second, he'd kind of wondered why. Then he'd realized that Grissom, like most fickle deities in mythology, had a plan that Nick had NO idea was coming at him until there was nothing to do but go with it.

It wasn't mercy against unpaid work, oh no. It was insurance policy so Greggo didn't crack up.

Nick could see the brittle edges, the way that Greg puttered around in the kitchen with a nervousness that he couldn't remember ever seeing in him before. Maybe it was the accident, but he was pretty sure it was something else -- namely, Grissom's absence.

The puttering had ended with cottage cheese and sliced strawberries on the table, Greg tucking into it with almost as much ferocity as he had the Mongolian beef. "Gil's been worried," he had excused with a grimace, shrugging. "I keep bruising his legs when I move too much."

And what was Nick supposed to say to that? 'I'll buy you a damn cheesecake'? People lost weight in the hospital, and....

Nick sucked in a breath and tried to shift a little. He was a human pillow, and it had been a damn long time since he'd dealt with Octopus Greg, let alone on purpose. It was good-friend kind of shit to do, except that Greg had one bony knee jammed up against Nick's thigh, and he could understand where Gil was coming from. There was acceptable, and then there was just plain ow. Maybe he could get Greg a cheesecake, or some bags of M&Ms or something. Maybe it was stress that was doing it to Greg. Maybe Gil not coming home didn't help. After all, Nick definitely made up for the emptiness of the bed, but Greg was restless even considering how he usually slept. His eye was rolling behind the lid. It made Nick wonder if the muscles beneath the protective cup over Greg's missing eye were moving like that, even as Greg's Black Death smacked him in the face.

Oof. Maybe Greg might get something bordering on sleep, but Nick was shit out of luck. He pushed Greg's weird stuffed thing down, and tried to turn away a little. Greg's hair was all wild and he looked sexy-disheveled, which made Nick suddenly worry that sleeping Greg might think he was Gil and try something except for the fact that their builds were way different. It wasn't like anybody could mistake Nick for Grissom, right? Nick went to the gym four or five times a week, and he was hard as a rock from his head to his toes. Grissom was getting older, and he was kind of looking pudgy around the edges, so maybe....

Aw, hell. Maybe he wasn't quite as secure in his manhood as he had thought.

He just had to relax. Relax and not think, because if Griss was pulling a double, he was going to be there for a while. It'd only been five hours or so, which was nothing. He could've been at the gym and back home already, except that he had Greg on top of him, and there was no way he could fall asleep in someone else's bed. It wasn't just someone else's bed, but he was on Griss's side of his bed, and that set off a whole new moment of weird in Nick's head. Griss was a great guy, a great CSI. The kind of guy from whom he wanted professional approval, because having that from somebody who knew everything was just impressive. It was, no matter what anybody else thought.

On the other hand, he had never planned on sleeping in the guy's bed, even if it was with Nick's own best friend. That just wasn't how things worked out, or it shouldn't be. If Nick had thought he could get away with it, he would have volunteered to go on that triple and let Gil come home instead.

"Mmmmph."

Nick cleared his throat, because Greg was nuzzling his chest. Oh God. That was the line, and when Greggo hopped that line, Nick was going to, to do something. Something not really drastic, because Greg was a good best friend and they got along great, but damn. Damn.

He had to admit he had a fear of being sleep humped, and right up until he realized his t-shirt was getting wet, he thought that was what was going on. Greg was making little sounds that shivered down Nick's spine, made his hands come up on their own to stroke his lower back. That was something Gil had mentioned when they had left -- be careful with him, and Nick was glad for the reminder. He _knew_ Greg had been burned pretty badly, he just wouldn't have thought about it much. Gil, of course, would have thought about it a lot, being Greg's lover and all. Boyfriend? There was something Nick never tried to work out, and maybe he'd have to ask sometime. Or not. Did guys consider themselves boyfriends when they were living together like that, sharing all their shit? Lovers sounded kind of sordid, given the age-gap that was kinda more like a cavern. Partners kinda worked and it sounded classy.

"Hey. Greg...?" Nick said it softly, carefully.

"Mmm?" Muffled questioning sound, that. Nick wasn't entirely sure it meant Greg was awake, either. He wondered if that was part of the reason Greg was having problems sleeping. Maybe it hurt too much or maybe.... maybe there was something else he wasn't getting about it.

Maybe Grissom wasn't getting it, either. If that was the case, it was kind of his duty to figure out the pieces at least as well as he could, because it wasn't like he was getting any sleep anyway.

"You okay? You're cryin'." Sort of. At least he hoped that Greg was, because it was that or eye-snot. Nick was suddenly deeply grateful for all of his nieces and nephews, and for the fact that he'd long since learned not to care about pee or poop or eye snot or boogers.

"Mm-mm." Jesus, that was the most pitiful sound Nick had ever heard, and the way Greg's arms tightened around him ached. "'m.... tired." He sounded exhausted, and Nick brought an arm up to pet Greg's head.

"Shhh. Shhhh. Is something wrong...?" There was tired and then there was crying in bed, and usually the two didn't meet without an intervening reason. Something that happened, that went wrong, that he couldn't shake. Nick knew how that went, nightmares and terrors and having to pack up all his shit and make someplace new feel like home and.... Just shit.

Maybe that was it. Past, present, and future worries weighing down on Greg.

He wasn't even certain that Greg was solidly awake, because Greg just gave a shuddering sigh and went still again, limp as if nothing had happened at all, and it hadn't. It hadn't, Nick didn't like seeing people cry, especially people he loved. Feeling it, he realized, was a lot worse than seeing it. He kept petting, though; hands gentle on Greg's head and lower back. That seemed to work out okay.

Greg went still finally, and it was just quiet breathing and one bony knee stuck against his thigh.

So. Greg had nightmare-things, too. Add that to one more imperceptible thing that Greg had in common with the boss, except getting cried on in his sleep was a little better than getting hurt in his sleep. There was no way Nick would be able to explain away a black eye when he showed up at work that night, and that thought made him grin a little. He supposed, if he was feeling cheesy, he could sing that Froggy song to Greg that his grandpa used to sing. He could only handle one weirdly humiliating situation at a time, though, and getting caught singing about Froggy courting Miss Mousy would be pretty high on his list of humiliations.

It was added to his 'what next' list if Greg decided to stop trying to sleep. He hadn't entered the cheese-zone that badly, just the bored unable to sleep zone because his best friend had just cried on his chest and now he was petting him to keep him asleep.

Who said that Kodak moments didn't happen anymore? He wouldn't be able to live that one down any more than he'd been able to live down the crime-stoppers newsletter, and boy, there was a thought he didn't want to have. Not now, not ever, and he just wasn't going to think about any of it. At all. Period.

"Nicky?" Greg asked, voice groggy. Maybe he hadn't actually been asleep, after all. "Zokay. Not gonna be able to sleep anyway. You oughta go home."

"Nah." Nah, it was kind of quiet, and why should they both be at home alone? "I kind of thought you were asleep. You want to talk about it?"

Greg sighed and shifted closer. "Just tired. Bad dreams. It's better when...." When Gil was there. "Things have been pretty busy, though."

Things had been busy, and Gil wasn't there. Nick tried to creak that thought through, but his brain wouldn't quite let him. Logically, they'd been living together for a year. A year in the same house, same bed, pretty low-key living and not too many fights that Nick'd heard about (and he did hear about most things from Greg) so.... He could kind of imagine getting that used to someone being there.

If any of his own relationships lasted that long, it probably wouldn't take as much imagination. "Yeah, they have been. Things'll calm down, you know, and... What kind of things are you dreaming about?"

For a while, Nick didn't think that Greg was going to answer him. He was tense, shivering, and it was obvious that he was going to have a hard time answering, if at all.

"Fire," he whispered finally, giving a violent shudder that spread all the way down to his toes. "Glass...."

"The accident," Nick finished for him quietly. "That's.... pretty normal, man. You're probably going to dream about that for a, a real long time." Like he dreamed about falling and the ceiling collapsing down onto him and pouring out obsessed sickness, and....

"We're pretty messed up, huh?" Greg read into that the way that Nick knew he would, and that seemed to help, at least a little. "I haven't said anything. I mean it's okay if he's here. That makes it all right, you know?"

"It's just a guess," Nick started slowly, "but maybe Griss knows what you're dreaming and just.... hasn't asked you outright? I'm going to be honest and say that this is the first time that I've gotten amnesty from pulling a double or a triple, whether or not I qualified for overtime."

"Maybe." Maybe, and obviously Greg wondered how much he knew. "I feel pretty pathetic. Like a kid who can't sleep in the dark by himself."

"It makes you feel kind of stupid," Nick agreed. 'You' was more of an us or a we kind of thing, since both him and Greg felt kind of pathetic. "But.... it's like your mind can't let go of it. There's no reason to be scared anymore, but you are, because you remember it, and your brain kind of helps you do that even when you're sleeping. Probably all of us have things we can't sleep because of. I keep thinkin' about Crane. Catherine.... you know that Cath has nightmares about Lindsey drowning in that car instead of her getting her out and Eddie dying all over again? Warrick almost got himself addicted to sleeping pills for a while 'cause of Holly's death."

"I've got some pills in the bathroom. I just...." Greg gave a shrug. "I don't want to take them. If I take them, then I can't wake up. If I don't sleep, I can't work, though, and...." He drew in a heavy sigh. "Geeze. I'm sorry to be such a baby."

"You're not being a baby." Nick patted Greg's head lightly, and smiled up at the faintly textured ceiling. He could kind of imagine Griss counting the paintbrush swirls. Or hell, maybe that was what Greg would've been doing if Nick hadn't been there. "You did get blown through a window."

"Mhm." Sleepy sound, and Nick hoped it meant that Greg might drift off, at least a little bit. "Still feel stupid," Greg yawned, hand curling against Nick's chest. "S'okay."

If Greg was drifting towards sleep again, Nick was happy to be quieter when he answered. "Just know that there's a lot of us who feel stupid. Might help."

"Kay." Kay seemed like a pretty good answer right at the moment. "Nicky?" he mumbled. "Gonna sleep 'gain now."

"Okay." He gave Greg's head another pat, and then closed his eyes. Hell, maybe he could get some sleep too. It didn't seem likely that Greg was going to sleep hump him, and he definitely couldn't sleep undress him.

It would all work out okay.

* * *

They had one hell of a good lead. It didn't mean that Gil wasn't exhausted, but finding the scarf had been worth the exhaustion, worth sending Nick home with Greg. Maybe.

Maybe, because he wasn't exactly sure that it would work out the way he'd hoped it would, that Nick would take the hint and watch over Greg because Gil was.... scared for Greg. Not in so many words, but the feeling was still there that he wasn't doing enough, that there was something important that he was missing.

It was a faint relief to see Nick's car was parked on the street, just to the side of the mailbox.

There was a thought that maybe Greg needed to change, that maybe Greg wasn't happy being stuck back into the lab like nothing had changed, but there was also the possibility that Gil was projecting. There was the possibility that no matter where he turned, he was projecting his own wants and whims. After all, his own tendencies told him to leave. Pack his bags and leave Vegas, move move move start over. It was insane, because he could still work -- with some annoying attention distribution problems and the odd balance problem -- and one ear at full hearing was still more reliable than two with hearing that went in and out. There was no reasonable explanation for his unrest, and because of that, maybe Greg was doing fine.

Maybe he was reading things that weren't there.

What Gil was sure he was doing was moving quietly. He'd unlocked the door, punched in his code for the alarm, closed the door, and relocked it, moving as quietly as possible.

There were signs of breakfast still on the table, a cottage cheese container and a bowl with the sticky remains of sliced strawberries. He knew that Greg was trying to eat things that were good for him because Gil was worried about him, and that made him smile a little. He was just so tired, and they were going to have to turn around and go back to work before he managed to get any rest, anyway.

It was a little maddening. He remembered things being that way before, when he'd been go-go-going for the FBI, case to case, traveling, sleeping and eating and working so much that it felt like sometimes he'd forget to breathe and didn't care. This time he cared, because it was a little harder not notice that it was wearing Greg ragged.

They'd just got back, and Gil already felt like he needed a vacation. Working himself to death wasn't going to bring Cyrus Lockwood back to life. It wouldn't bring anyone back to life, but all he could do was work because they were the victim's last voices, and if someone didn't speak for them, let the evidence speak for them, then....

Then Gil didn't know who would. Every time he felt like he could be a little dismissive about the job, coast from rise to fall of it, guilt bit into him for it. There was a reason why their work existed, and Gil wondered if he was doing everything he could, if...

Sometimes Gil had to turn his mind off, go about tidying the kitchen, wondering where Nick was when he put the cottage cheese back -- probably spoiled -- and ate a couple of the sliced strawberry pieces. He left the rest out on the counter, and half-hoped for ants before he turned to start towards the bedroom.

Turning his good ear in that direction, he hoped to hear the sound of Greg's snores. There came instead a faint susurration, a whispering sound that caught at Gil's hearing, no matter how tired he was.

"Shhhh. Shhhhh. Griss'll be home soon. Shhhh."

What the...?

Quietly, carefully, Gil pushed the bedroom door open, and he honestly couldn't say he was surprised by what he saw. Greg was half-sprawled from under the covers, one knee pressed hard into Nick's leg, and Nick was holding him more tightly than he needed to be.

"Sorry. Sorry."

If it had been night, there would have been a spill of light to tell them that he was there. It wasn't -- the sun was coming in through the edges of the blinds, and not the doorway, so Gil stood unnoticed for the moment. He wasn't sure how much longer that would last with him standing there watching, trying not to allow his mind to click on yet because there was a crowd of thoughts that rose up sharper than he'd expected them to. Thoughts like 'That's my place' and bits of sharp jealousy that didn't make much sense.

It was probably because someone else was doing something that he should have been there to do.

"Want Gil." The pitiful way that Greg said it seemed so hopeless, as if Gil wasn't coming, and maybe.... He'd pulled double shifts three days in a row, and going back to work had to be tough on more than just him. "'m sorry. 'm sorry."

"Shhh, 's all right. It's okay. You just need to sleep. You'll feel better. I'll get that stuff you said you had...."

"Don't want it!" Greg denied sharply, a harsh hiccough interrupting him. "Don't. I'll be too sleepy tonight to work, and...."

And he'd dream.

Gil knew how that went, too sharply. When he needed to sleep and nothing would help and.... He didn't want to tell Greg that he was doing better than Gil had done when he'd first had horrible unshakable dreams, because he didn't want to cheapen Greg's pain by comparing it to something so completely different. Didn't want to distract Greg, because Greg had a habit of looking to fix Gil first if there was an opportunity for it.

There wasn't too much comfort that Gil could give. He had a medication for bad 'nights', but the sleep specialist had merely suggested for Gil a better version of what he'd always tried. Meditation. It was past time to work on that with Greg, apparently. They could start on the weekend, sooner if Greg could shake the teary frustration of wanting to sleep but not being able to.

"Stop thinking about that," Nick urged him quietly. "You're just getting yourself worked up worse."

Gil still couldn't make himself move to say words or make a sound. He just kept watching, pushing down thoughts he shouldn't toy with, and then took a step backwards. He could pretend to enter the house again, make noise this time; and he wouldn't wonder if Greg would maybe be better with someone else, because it was a strange and petty thought for Gil to have.

"I want Gil." He could hear the bitter little laugh, even as he shut the door behind himself. "'m such a fucking baby, but I can't. I can't. I'm glad you stayed, but I hate you did, 'cause falling apart alone is okay...."

Falling apart on Gil would be okay, too, and that was something Gil needed to keep firmly in mind. In front of Nick.... well, Greg wasn't going to be happy or normal about that for a long time. Gil was different, though.

Gil walked back to the living room, set his kit loudly on the table's edge, and then rather accidentally knocked it over.

Then he headed for the kitchen, and made sure that the refrigerator made a maximum of noise when he opened and closed it to pour himself a glass of milk. Not for himself. It was going right into the Pyrex two-cup measuring cup and then into the microwave, but that and the microwave made noise. There were a lot of things that made noise, except for the solitary ant that was stopping at the bowl of strawberries.

Ah, he was right. There was a colony, either in the house or just outside of it.

Excellent.

He wasn't surprised to see Nick coming out of the bedroom before the microwave went off, wearing boxers and a t-shirt as he came up to the kitchen counter and leaned against it, yawning.

"Hey," Nicky said softly. "Saw you back out. Greggo missed it, though. He's kind of a mess. I should probably go, save his pride a little. Tell him to stay in tonight, okay? You should too if you can. I'll pull whatever they need you for."

"I'll probably come by with my report. The case is essentially closed. They have an APB out on Rubio, but we have enough to get him for five murders and robbery. The case against Braun...." Gil trailed off, shaking his head but careful to still keep Nick either in his eyesight or at least towards his left side. "Flimsy. A jury won't convict, even with our evidence. Nick? Thank you for trying."

"Welcome." Nick knew as well as Gil did that it hadn't helped much, but still.

"Get him to take whatever medicine it is he's got in the bathroom, will you? He's dozing, maybe almost an hour, but then he wakes up like that again."

"Did he mean his painkillers, or the sedatives I have in there?" Maybe he'd been explicit with Nick earlier or maybe not. Gil couldn't guess, but he was going with the homemade remedy that involved a little raw sugar dissolved in milk and vanilla flavoring.

"Sedative, I think," Nick answered, yawning. "I think it's gonna take it. He's pretty worked up...." Dark eyes peeked at him, a little smile crossing Nick's mouth. "You know how it is. Kinda tough when your world's upside down."

He knew quite well, and gave a slight incline of his head to Nick as he poured the milk back into the glass, before reaching into a drawer for the box of raw sugar. Nick liked to pry sometimes, and Gil tended not to oblige him -- the pieces of his life that investigation and Jack had turned out for purview were more than enough for Gil.

"I know. You should probably get going, get some sleep for yourself before you have to go in."

"Will do. You need anything, gimme a call, okay? And, uh. Let me know how things are later." Nick cast one more worried glance at the door and then shrugged, heading for the living room where Gil could see his pants draped over a chair.

"I will. We'll work something out for Greg." And his sleeping problems, because there was nothing like losing sleep to walk a man right over the edge when things were already bad. Gil half-watched Nick until he stepped out of view, and Gil decided to stay in the kitchen until Nick was dressed. That way, he could throw the locks and set the alarm when he left.

That way, he'd know Nick was gone, and the unreasonable jealousy in the pit of his belly would settle down. Maybe.

By the time Nick left, Gil was a little impatient and trying desperately not to show it. The milk was a drinkable temperature, so he locked up behind the younger man and set the alarm for staying home before heading back to the bedroom and Greg.

Greg was still sprawled in bed, which hadn't surprised him, but he seemed awake, the stuffed Black Death germ clutched up under his chin in hands that were probably unsteady.

"Greg?"

"Hey," Greg said, smiling at him. Smiling, because he probably didn't want Gil to know he was having a hard time. "D'you catch the guy?"

"There's an APB out, but we have the case in a lock." Except against Braun, but he wasn't going to talk about the case just yet. "Brass had a lead on where Rubio was headed, but I don't want to deal with it anymore right now." It was easy for Gil to hold the glass out to Greg as he perched on the edge of the mattress, the spot still slightly warm from Nick.

"Okay." Greg was easy like that, and Gil found it amazing to watch the tension slowly seeping out of him. It was nothing like the way he had been ten minutes ago, tense and shaking and miserable. "We don't have a lot of time to sleep."

"I'm calling in for both of us. I'll write up a report and leave it at the department whenever we get up." Gil waited until Greg's hand was wrapped around the warm glass, and it was only then that he withdrew his own hand. "You look tired."

"Mmm. Um. Bad dreams," Greg offered, looking at him hopefully. He obviously wanted Gil to accept that as the only reason, but Gil knew better. He knew that his presence made a difference, the same way Greg's made a difference to him. "Just.... tired." And he wasn't going to argue about going back.

"I'm tired, too," Gil smiled a little, watching Greg when he knew he should've been taking his shoes off, getting undressed, contemplating a shower. It was better to lean forward, fingers reaching for Greg's face. "Sometimes I'm struck by how very glad I am that you're alive."

Greg's eye closed, and whatever was left of his anxiety faded so that he could shift against Gil's touch, still clutching his cup of warm milk. "I'm glad, too."

Warm skin against his palm, and Greg leaned into him faintly. Gil wanted to kiss him, but he also wanted Greg to drink that. "I'm going to take a quick shower, but then I'll be back. Do you want to, maybe, join me? Sometimes a hot shower can help...."

"Hm-mm," Greg denied, shifting so that he could drink his milk. "Now that you're home, I think I might be able to sleep. Nobody makes this for me like you do. Just.... come back soon."

They needed to talk about it. They needed to sit down and Gil had to figure out if he was projecting about Greg's uneasiness or not. They wouldn't talk yet, though, because Greg was tired and frustrated, and he looked ruffled and sexy, and.... It took every ounce of Gil's control not to lean forward and kiss Greg just yet. He let his hand linger, and then sat back for a moment before he stood up.

"I won't take long."

The way Greg smiled at him was tender, not so worried or upset as he had been before. Everything seemed almost normal, even though Gil knew that it wasn't. "Kay," he said sleepily, snuggling into the center of the bed. Was it so simple, really? Just like that, that Greg would be satisfied with having Gil home, and that made it all right?

It was faintly worrying, if Gil turned that thought over in his head while he quickly undressed, stripped down to boxers and his undershirt before he walked past the closet doors and into the master bath. He didn't bother to close the door to keep heat in since it was a warm afternoon and since Greg seemed to draw comfort from him being there.

It had probably been too soon for Gil to push for a return to normality. Maybe it just wasn't possible after a couple of weeks for everything to go back to the way it was. Greg was still hurt, even though everything was healing nicely, and he remembered his own stay in the hospital after the first incident with Hannibal -- the first and the second. Maybe he'd just gotten too accustomed to taking complete catastrophes in stride.

Nick had helped to put the seriousness of things in perspective a little, but they'd have a little time now to relax and he could possibly help Greg regroup. At least he could teach Greg some meditation techniques. Even if he always needed Gil to sleep, a facade of self-control could be as helpful as actual self-control. Gil had learned that from all of those catastrophes, hadn't he? Even he'd needed help, a lot of it, from outside sources, even if now....

Gil stepped under the water spraying out of the showerhead after testing it for warmth and closed his eyes. He never wanted Greg to be so comfortable with catastrophe that he could just shrug it off. He didn't want to see that happen, to see the kinds of shadows in Greg's eyes that he had seen in Molly's at the last.

He didn't want to be responsible for putting them there.

Maybe he should talk to Jim. Jim knew a lot about relationships and what made them go bad. Gil didn't think things with Greg would go south, but it was always nice to have somebody to talk to about things. Nick would no doubt drag Greg off for pool or something with Warrick, and that would be the perfect opportunity to talk to Jim alone and honestly. Until then, Gil decided while he lathered shampoo through his hair, he could go back to being sure that he was living, that Greg was living, and that what they were living was happy and how they'd agreed they wanted things to be.

Greg would probably help him corral the ant colony.

By the time he rinsed himself clean and towel dried his hair, Greg was settled firmly in the middle of the bed, his fist against his mouth, one elbow crooked around his germ as if everything was right with the world. All it had taken was Gil coming home to make it that way. That was worrisome in and of its own right. Greg wasn't that dependent on Gil, was he?

People weren't supposed to be that.... that way, Gil noted as he shifted to crawl into bed behind Greg instead of in front of him. It would be easier to hear that way.

People, people like Greg, were supposed to be free spirits, except Greg had trouble sleeping after Millander, after he'd met Hannibal. A lot of trouble, and perhaps it had been so bad then, except that Gil hadn't had opportunity to look and dissect evidence then because he'd been a wreck himself. He didn't want Greg to need him that much. What if something happened? What if Hannibal did come back, or there was an accident? Gil didn't want Greg falling apart, unable to keep himself together. He wanted Greg to be able to stand on his own.

Maybe two weeks was too soon to expect him to be able to do that. Maybe Gil shouldn't want that, since he didn't want Greg to bounce back from trauma as if it wasn't there, the way Gil did, and have it bite him in the ass later. Surely there had to be some middle ground, a middle ground that didn't have him considering his own mortality in light of how it could affect his partner. At least they'd started the paperwork to that end, so if something did happen to him, Greg was his beneficiary, and Greg....

Greg was breathing so softly when Gil settled behind him and pulled the sheet up over himself somewhat, curling gently around Greg's back. No, it was time to pack up thought for a little while and just enjoy. Greg smelled faintly of sweat and soap and strawberries from breakfast, his body curling back into Gil as if that was the way things should be. It worried Gil a little for his back, but he could see that the bandages were on properly, just like the cup over Greg's eye. It would be all right.

They'd live and when they woke up in the familiar dark of their working-day world, they'd live a little more. Gil closed his eyes, and pressed his face against Greg's hair, enjoying the smells and the warmth and the reality of it. Greg was the real thing. Not dead cops or bodies and silk scarves in the dessert. If it took Gil's presence for him to sleep right now, that was what he would get. They could worry about everything else later.

* * *

Greg hadn't felt so good in days.

Everything seemed perfect. The room was dark, and the muzzy feeling of fading sleep lingered down to the tips of his toes and fingers. He could feel a warm, heavy arm against his hip, and that was unusual. Normally, he was the one crawling all over Gil, not Gil curled up around him.

He almost wondered what had led to that, but it was nice. Gil was still holding him, even if he was behind him, and it was good not to wake up sore and shaky and scared. Gil had taken the night off, either to be with Greg or because he hadn't been ready to work that many double shifts in a row so soon back to work.

People just weren't made to put in their whole forty-hour work week in under two days. Greg had always thought it was physically impossible until he had seen Gil working triple shifts and looking fresher than people who were coming into the lab in the morning for their first one. On the other hand, Greg was fairly sure the rest of the lab hated his guts for being disgustingly perky and caffeine high by the start of shift number three, too, if things were in bad shape.

With a sigh, he settled back against Gil and closed his eyes again, wondering what time it was. It had to be pretty late; it was dark out, after all, and summer was coming. That meant it was after eight, for sure, and probably after nine, not that Greg could see the clock.

It didn't matter what time it was, because they obviously didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do. They could decide for themselves what to do, whenever they got out of bed. For now, Greg liked the feel of Gil's arm over his hip, and the shift behind him that said Gil was naked and probably having a good dream.

Greg hoped it was the kind of dream that included naked Gregs, pineapple rings, and whipped cream. It had been long enough and he'd felt bad enough that Gil deserved a good dream like that. For that matter, Greg figured maybe he did, too, and he let out a sigh, content to be just where he was. All in all, he had it pretty good. Gil had just known he'd benefit from something warm and soothing and sweet, and he came home from work, and he'd called them both in sick and.... And. It was nice, nice that he was cared for, and thought of, and that he'd finally had Gil to sleep with. Just a few hours of sleep made such a difference in the tilt of the world, put everything back in the right position. Greg could be happy again, could be himself. Maybe someday soon, he wouldn't need Gil as desperately as he did currently.

If Gil knew, it would just worry him, scare him even. Greg didn't want that. At the same time, Greg knew he was going to have to say something. Three nights of tossing and turning, being afraid of his nightmares and sleeping alone, as good as told him that he would have to confess. Just.... not quite yet. The feeling of Gil nudging at him didn't lead to that kind of conversation, did it?

There wasn't anything that did as good as job at changing Greg's priorities as the promise of sex. Nick had once told him outright that he had no idea what the physical attraction was that Greg had with Gil, and Greg had just smirked a lot.

Where did he start? Maybe with -- Oh. Oh, fuck, there were lips pressing against the back of his neck, just to the side of the patchy bandages, and Gil moved closer to Greg, with a kind of half-sleepy purpose.

"Hmmm. Hi," Greg rumbled, the drowsy sound barely breaking the quiet of their bedroom. All of Gil's friendly crawly critters stayed in the office across from their room, thank God. "Mmmmm."

"Mmm." The answering rumble was deep and just as sleepy as his own had been. For a moment, Gil's arm tightened around him, and he sighed against the back of Greg's neck. "Morning."

"A very good one." Yeah, because Gil was sliding up against him, and Greg wouldn't have any trouble sliding the ladybug boxers down and out of the way. Sometimes, he thought that the end of their bed was a secret repository for runaway underpants. "Like that."

"So do I." No talking about it, just lazy motions and Gil's hand pressing against his stomach before he snuck fingertips beneath the elastic waistband and got his hand around Greg's penis.

Lazy evening fucks were Greg's favorite thing. "Hmmmn...." He could feel his brows knitting with the pleasure of it. It felt like it had been forever since Gil had touched him, and it had only been a handful of days, if that. "Oh...."

A few days was still a hell of a long time and the last time they'd fucked had ended kind of fucked up. This was way different, because Gil was nuzzling into his hair and against bare skin. While one hand wrapped itself around his cock and started to stroke slowly -- not to get him off, but to get him really going -- Gil slid his other arm around Greg from underneath, fingers aiming to tease around his belly button.

Hopefully he was going to use that hand to shove Greg's boxers down.

"Love it when it's like this." Slow and a little drowsy, hotter than fast and hard, the way Greg tended to go at things, pellmell down the hill, faster and faster. With Gil, everything was a winding path, and that made sex an adventure no matter how many times they did it or how many ways they tried it. "Love you. Love you."

"I love how you feel." Gil shifted faintly, the fingertips of his free hand tracing the muscles beneath the skin of Greg's abdomen, while the thumb of his more occupied hand traced over the edge of Greg's circumcision scar. "How you sound."

Guh. That felt.... so good, the way that thumb rubbed, making him give a groan that came from somewhere so deep in his belly that Greg wondered where he had found it. "Hmm. Oh, yeah." Yeah, and Gil was still nudging at his ass in the best way.

Through fabric, firm and slow motions, sliding up along his crack until Gil's free hand finally started to get to work at getting Greg's boxers down. Greg half-thought that maybe he could do something with his hands, but he wasn't sure where to start because it felt good and lazy and Gil wasn't rushing or trying to be efficient. He was just teasing Greg's dick with his thumb and getting him bare-assed.

This morning would be a good day to let Gil wind his way down whatever path pleased him most, Greg thought, letting out a faint whimper and shifting to help Gil get him naked. "Perfect," he told Gil blearily. "Best ever." That was the honest truth; sex was all well and good and lots of fun, but sex with Gil was something extra special. It was extra special every time, too, maybe because afterwards there wasn't awkwardness, there was breakfast and weird day-to-day stuff, and Gil looking for his checkbook so he could pay the power bill. Just then there was the shift of hip and ass, though, and Greg kicking his legs to get them free of the boxers. The moment they were off, Gil was pressed right up against his skin and his bandages, and his dick was right between Greg's cheeks.

"Love it like this," Greg hummed, shivering a little. He brought one hand around to touch Gil's wrist, stroking it in time with the steady shift of Gil's thumb. "Love it with you. Please. Please." He could feel Gil's tongue on the side of his neck, playing connect the dots with freckles that Greg usually forgot he even had. That was sexy, too.

"I wonder where the lube is...." It was a little rhetorical, because Gil knew where it was, and neither of them were in a position to get it. Maybe Greg could just start keeping a tube stuffed under the pillows, because he wasn't going to be able to squirm away from Gil with any kind of ease. Not when his dick was slowly being teased, and Gil's was rubbing against his ass in slow, easy motions.

"Teasing me...." There was no way to stop the whimpering, not when it all felt so good. Gil was fucking him gently, sliding up against him in the best way. Greg could feel the head of Gil's cock pushing slowly against his hole every so often, just whetting his appetite, making him want fucking so badly he could taste it.

"Mm, I'll have to until I can find the lube. Or.... something that would work as well." God, if Gil kept thrusting slowly, working his hips back and forth right against Greg's asscrack, he'd at least be able to get the head of his dick in. Maybe not anything else, but Greg wanted it. He wanted it so bad, wanted Gil sliding in him, making him yell and shudder and come all over Gil's hand.

Maybe that would be enough. Sometimes, it was, because Greg wanted it so bad. He moaned, shoving against Gil's hand and reaching one of his own to touch lightly at Gil's arm. "Unhhh yeah. Yeah...."

"Keep talking." Gil shifted, lips pressing against his skin, the fingers around Greg's cock stroking just a little faster. His hips moved, and fuck, maybe that was Gil's plan. Just get in him a little, just to make Greg feel good without having to get out of bed to get the lube.

"You like to hear me talk." It was strained, almost whined, but it was something. "You wanna hear me tell you how I love it when you fuck me. Love your cock, love your hands...." Oh, yeah, loved those hands, would have moved in with him on a permanent basis even if Gil had only ever wanted to jerk him off. "If I come all over you, will you use it to fuck me?" The head of Gil's cock prodded, pushed, so close, aching, so good. So fucking good, and Greg couldn't help groaning.

Gil's groan rumbled against the back of his neck, and a faint jerk of motion, Gil's hips pressing forward and fuck, fuck fucking god he couldn't think slow and lazy, not when there was Gil's dickhead just barely inside of him and fingers touching over his balls while Gil started to jerk him off.

Jesus. Jesus, and he was yelling out loud, a filthy parody of prayer, pushing back as much as Gil would let him and shoving forward to Gil's hand. It felt so good. So good. He wanted so much, and stopping for lube was too much to bear. He couldn't do it, couldn't, couldn't, and he was so close, all downhill from there.

There was just too much sensation after way too long and Gil's dick up inside of his ass, spreading him out and making him burn and he'd be sore from a dry penetration for a little while afterwards, but it felt screaming shuddering coming all over Gil's fingers fantastic in that moment. So much, too much, and by the time he got his head back on straight, he could feel Gil behind him. He was still stretched, the head still in him, but Gil was jerking off for all he was worth with that wet hand, and Greg couldn't help groaning and pulling even tighter around him.

The idea hadn't ever crossed Greg's mind, but god it felt hot. Gil's other arm had gone a little tight around Greg's chest, and he could feel Gil sucking in harsh breaths, almost there himself, head bent down a little against the back of Greg's neck. He was still careful not to press against a bad spot even when he was pumping his fist in short fast strokes, the side of his hand and thumb smacking against Greg's ass.

It made Greg want to come again, and his hand stroked down between his legs, caressing the softness there as if just thinking about it would magically make him hard again, make him explode when Gil did. "So hot," he whimpered. "Oh, fuck, it's so hot, Gil." Felt so good.

It felt even better when Gil's other palm pressed flat against Greg's chest, fingers faintly sticky and tensing when Gil curled closer against Greg, groaning. "Yes, fuck, Greg, you're so...." Something, something that sounded like 'nnn', because then Gil's hips hitched his dick just a little further into Greg just when he came.

Greg had a hard time pulling his brains back into his head from wherever they had gone. For a while, there wasn't any coherent way to express much of anything, but he finally managed to groan. "I think you killed me. Oh, fuck, that was the hottest thing.... ever."

"You're the hottest thing ever." It wasn't something for Gil to naturally say, but he did like to turn people's words back on them when he corrected them, and it sounded nice in his easy, relaxed, sated voice. Greg didn't have Gil in him any more, but Gil was still pressed close up against him, semen-sticky fingers resting on Greg's hip now, too.

"I think we need to shower."

"That would require movement." Right at the moment, Greg was pretty reluctant to do that. On the other hand, the slickness leaking out of him was going to get annoying pretty quick. "If we go take a shower, can we get up and see if I managed to completely destroy the cottage cheese? I think I'm hungry."

"I put it back in the fridge, and left out the strawberries." Gil tilted his head up a little, not making a move to get up just yet. It felt good, slick sweaty skin and Gil leaning up faintly to kiss a little of Greg's unscathed earlobe.

"Hm. You just want a new colony of red ants," Greg accused, shivering. Okay. Maybe getting out of bed could wait a little. Maybe they could do it again, or something else. That felt pretty good.

Gil sighed, a soft huff against Greg's ear before he slipped his tongue briefly into the whorls. "I can't lie and say 'no', because I can't lie to you."

"I know. It's one of the things I love best about you. I could lie here a while. We could do this again, but.... why don't we get up instead?" Finding a new bunch of ants would make Gil happy, and making Gil happy made Greg happy. It was a great cycle.

There was another softer kiss, just behind his ear, and Gil used one hand and his hip against the bed to start shifting them up towards sitting. "I'll make the shower worth getting up for."

"Promise?" Greg asked, moving with Gil. A shower and a new ant colony. It sounded like a pretty good day to Greg.

"I promise."

* * *

A day off had been the best prescription for both his mood and Greg's mood. Gil's heart felt lighter for it, for a day spent watching Greg's missed TV shows and trying to find Gil's ant colony so he could put a new one in the terrarium.

The next day had started just as nicely, and Nick had called Greg to invite him out for beer. That left Gil a short list of a thousand things that he could do, except he knew what he needed to do the most out of the list. All in all, meeting Jim for drinks wasn't such a bad thing to do when Greg was on the other side of town doing almost exactly the same thing.

"So. What bug's eating at you?" Jim asked him as soon as he settled down at the table Gil had claimed for his own. The waitress came by almost automatically, since it was a slow morning. "Negro Modelo," he ordered, nodding at her. "And, uh.... hey, you eat breakfast yet?"

"Or whatever the meal is right now? I can't remember, so that's probably a no." Somewhere in the time since he'd gotten up, he'd eaten, but he'd also explained a new article to Greg and gotten some insight from an outsider, and then watched Greg try to start Ant World War Three inside the terrarium by dropping in an ant from the ant farm, who was from a completely different colony.

It didn't take much for Greg.

"Right, then, uh, think why don't we order one of those big samplers? Yeah. Bring us one of those. I'll worry about my triglycerides some other day," Jim decided, tucking the little appetizer menu back into the rack at the center of the table. He waited patiently until the waitress went to get his beer and put in their order. "So. You didn't mention what's on your mind."

"Perspective." Gil took a sip of his whiskey, a small sip, and let it soak into his senses as he watched Jim. He'd switch to beer after that, even if mixing drinks was a one way trip to a hangover if he ended up drinking too much. "I think I've lost mine."

"Huh." Jim nodded, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table. "You know, it's not something I expect to hear you say, Gil, so.... what's the problem, exactly?"

"Greg's having problems.... adjusting," Gil said carefully, trying to pick his way through the words. "Or I'm having problems adjusting to him needing to adjust. I'm not good with people, Jim, and sometimes it hits me like a train."

Jim sat back, and the waitress appeared out of nowhere with his beer. He took a long pull on the neck and then moved so that his own neck cracked. "Adjusting to catastrophe's a fact of life. You do it like it's nothing, like it's easy. Maybe it is for you. Probably it is for you. Most people take longer, Gil."

Sometimes, he just needed to hear someone else say the thing he already knew. "I know. I.... have no idea what to do to help Greg, because of that. I know I pushed him too soon to go back to work."

After all, he was the workaholic, not Greg. Greg loved his job, but he didn't need it to live.

"Be there." Jim shrugged. "It's hard for guys like you and me. The job's everything, and it has been for so long that sometimes we forget other people don't just magically go to work to feel better."

Gil found himself smiling down into his glass. "Remember when you were shot? You kept slipping into the employee restroom to make sure you weren't bleeding through the bandages?"

"I remember that time you made me live with that black eye for a week. I still haven't forgiven you," Jim laughed, taking a long swallow out of his beer bottle. "I noticed you bought Preparation H that time you socked Sanders. Bet that was a hell of an experience."

A hell of an experience. Greg had alternatively guilted him and promised that it was all right, and then he'd turn around again and use it as a playful tool. "I had to watch all of the Terminator movies."

"Hey, the last one wasn't so bad. Pretty hot chick," Jim laughed, teasing him. "Bet you liked that one, at least?"

Actually, Gil had thought that the second one was the best. It was probably because Greg had confessed to having a crush on Edward Furlong, and had showed Gil pictures of his attempts at asymmetric haircuts. The spikes suited him much better.

At least he never had to worry about messing up Greg's hair.

"I've seen better 'things blow up' movies," Gil drawled. He took another sip of his drink, and watched Jim molest the neck of his beer. "But.... it just shows that Greg reacts in ways I never can quite predict, which brings me back to knowing that I should do something and not knowing what to do. Any words of wisdom, Jim?"

"Stick it out. Don't work triple shifts. Keep to a regular schedule." Jim would know. That was what had cost him his wife and daughter, in the long run. "Make life as normal as possible for a while. I mean, the kid's just lost an eye, and he doesn't handle stuff like you do, or like I do. You and me, we want to go back to work and forget this stuff." Like Gil's ear. Jim knew about that. "Sanders isn't like us."

Right. Molly would have been the same, if she hadn't left at the touch of catastrophe, which spoke of a clear difference that Gil could only just now recognize. Greg clung more to get his ground, instead of just running away. "No, he's not, but there's no way to.... to keep from working double shifts at least once a week, or from being on call."

"Yeah, well, where've you been for the last three days?" Gil knew that Nick wouldn't have said anything, so Jim must have been paying attention. He didn't even have to say anything. "You work four days on, three days off, Gil. C'mon. I mean, there's overtime, and then there's plain greedy. We all knew Lockwood, so I know why you're working your ass off, but you got other priorities right now."

Jim was right. He'd managed to call in and take a day off so that Greg could sleep but he shouldn't have let things get that bad in the first place, even if they'd been on a hot case. He should have been more aware. "I know. And I know.... that if we get another big case, I'll do it all over again, Jim."

"Yeah, well, want me to jerk a knot in your ass a day or so sooner?" Jim shrugged. "It's just different this time. Give it a month, and it'll probably be more like it used to."

It might be more like it used to be, if Gil was hopeful and if Jim was right. "Logically, I know that. Just.... maybe I do need someone to hit me if I try to do more than one double shift in a row. I can function without sleep, but Greg can't."

"Sure he can. Just.... you know. Sanders is tough, but the lab blew up two weeks ago. Catherine's still twitching because she caused it, and she wasn't even in it. Know what I'm saying?" Their waitress strolled by and dropped off a huge platter of stuff that looked like it could raise cholesterol just by sitting there.

Gil leaned back, and smiled at the waitress. "I'd like the same beer as he's having, thanks."

It had only been a couple of weeks, hadn't it? More than that, now, but it seemed like so long ago. He waited for the waitress to leave, and finished off his whiskey. "I know what you're saying. Catherine just got back from suspension," Gil added. "And.... maybe Greg needs time off. I don't know."

"Nah. He needs to get back into the swing of things, but you gotta remember things are all fucked up. He's just a kid, Gil." Jim reached out and snagged a strip of extra crunchy fried chicken, dipping it into sauce. "Normal schedules for a while, not getting all caught up in work. Don't let him do it, either, 'cause he's not as bad as you, but none of you guys are good about going home when you should."

Said the pot to the kettle.

"So then you do remember what your apartment looks like inside?" Gil asked, cocking a look at Jim. He waited to reach for a piece of food that was probably worse for him than the drinking, and then picked up a mozzarella stick.

Jim's advice seemed easier to handle than the possibility of taking time off that neither of them had.

"I swear I saw it just a week ago. Or was it two? Hey, and I'm pretty sure I watered the plants sometime this month and everything." Jim looked at him seriously. "You feel better?"

"Yeah." All he had to do was make sure that things had a normal schedule and stick to it until Greg had had enough time to adjust. As much time as Greg needed. "Thanks, Jim. Sometimes I need someone to repeat the obvious until I actually acknowledge it."

"Yeah, well, what can I say? I'm just the guy to do it. Now, if you want any of this chicken, you'd better get ready to fight me for it." Jim grinned and reached for another strip.

"And my only weapon is a half-eaten mozzarella stick," Gil sighed, looking at it forlornly for a moment before he thrust it out at Jim like a sword, reaching with his other hand for a chicken strip.

"En garde."

* * *

Three beers in, Greg figured out that beer plus meds equaled incredibly bad pool. It didn't help that he'd potted the eight ball trying to get his last stripe.

On the other hand, at least he had hit something.

"Maybe we should try beer and pinball next time," Nick suggested thoughtfully as he refilled Greg's glass from the last pitcher that he'd bought. "Or something."

"There's less chance of poking out my other eye?" Okay, so when he was drunk, he could definitely laugh at himself. Come to think of it, that was pretty funny. "I see your point."

Nick chuckled, leaning on his cue before he moved to fish out the eight ball. "Heh, man, I guess this is the only way I'm gonna win, right?"

"Are you calling me a pool shark?" Greg asked, all innocence. He wasn't nearly as good as he had been before, but a good night's sleep and the first beer had helped his hands to steady, and that was a pretty good sign.

He could probably go in to work with a beer under his belt, and still be better than the guy who did DNA for Ecklie. Not that Gil would like that, but if he wheedled he could get away with it for a couple of days. Maybe. Possibly.

At least whenever he got a taxi home, Gil would probably let Greg pass out drunk on the sofa with his head on Gil's lap.

"Yeah. You'll get it back, with a little practice and some time," Nick grinned. "You've been home how long, and you're already doing good?"

They definitely weren't going to talk about that humiliating crying thing. Just thinking about it made Greg kind of twitchy. "Yeah, well, I haven't dropped anything or broken equipment yet, so I guess I'm doing okay."

"Yeah, and why would you drop anything? You're good." Nick nodded to himself, and took a swig of his beer. "Want to re-rack, or sit down?"

"Sit down before I fall down." He was still shy a few pounds, and between that, the beer, and the meds, he was pretty sure sitting was the best idea anybody had ever had. "We can re-rack later. Hey, I'm glad you called."

"I figured there was nothing to lose. After all, if you're busy you're probably the first person I know who'll straight up tell me. Like you did yesterday." Nick faked putting a phone to his ear while he laid the cue down on the table and picked up the pitcher. "'Is that you, Nick? Yeah? I'm sorry, I'm knee deep in ants now. Yeah, they took over the kitchen!'"

"They did!" Greg protested, grinning as he watched Nick drain the last drops of beer into his glass. "There was this whole huge swathe of ANTS, and it was so cool! Gil's got this gigantic ant farm for them, and I think we've managed to get most of them all penned up, so to speak. It's great!"

"What'd you bait them out with? I mean, was this something you two did on purpose, or was this accidental?" Nick took the glass, and left the pitcher on the bar before he gestured Greg over to a side booth.

"We left out those strawberries," Greg confessed, sliding in on his side of the booth. "Gil saw them, put out some more, and before we knew it, there was this huge trail of ants leading out the back door. They were building a bed in the air conditioning unit, so it's good that we found them. That gets expensive."

"It does? I wouldn't know. My landlord takes care of that kind of shit." Nick slid in across from Greg, grinning. "That still makes me laugh, you know? That you're living in an actual house and being all grown up before the rest of us."

"Hey! I'm grown up!" Greg paused. "Okay. I'm great at pretending to be grown up. Why would anybody actually, you know, want to be one? It's better to be six at heart and just enjoy doing cool grown up stuff like driving and eating ice cream for breakfast."

"Uh-huh, and is Griss grown up, pretending, or should I even ask that, since he left strawberries out for ants?" Nick's expression was easy, relaxed as he took another swig.

"You're talking about a man who comes in early to play with cool dead bodies that come in on other shifts. What do you think?" Greg grinned

"Never grew up," Nick smirked back decisively. "But to hear my mother talk, everybody has to grow up sometime. She called me last night just chewing about 'are you still living in that apartment' and blah blah, found any nice girls, blah blah. Maybe I should just pretend harder."

"Let a guy move in." It was circuitous logic, but Greg knew what he was talking about. "She'll be so scared you're gay that she'll stop hassling you. Besides. I can already tell her you just like hookers with hearts of gold," he teased.

Greg could see Nick's face twinge just a little before he grinned. "Yeah, well. It just clicked and it was bad luck. I've kind of given up on hunting, and I'm just.... waiting to see if something clicks. You know?"

There wasn't any way to keep his face from softening. "I know, but.... when it does, pay close attention, okay? Sometimes, if you blink, you'll miss it."

"Yeah." Nick's grin tilted towards softer, too, for a second. "I'm not shutting myself out to options. It's just.... not the only thing I spend my free time doing. It's getting to me, getting invited to my college buddy's weddings and shit. It's.... I don't know. Early mid-life crisis or something. I should get a motorcycle."

"What you need to do is go on a date." Greg rolled his eyes. Three years ago, he'd have offered himself for dating Nick, if Nick wouldn't have scuttled off in terror at the thought. Then there had been Gil, though, and Gil.... well, Gil. "Want me to make a couple of calls? I know some great girls." And guys. Or he had, once upon a time. These days, he mostly spent time with people from the lab and occasionally enjoyed visits from family members passing through Vegas. The thought of cousin Wilhelm still scared the shit out of him, though.

Nick shifted, eyeing Greg. "Are they your kind of people? I guess I could give it a try...."

"They're my kind of people, but I swear I know at least two people who like country music. There's this one that thinks the best thing ever is ELO's 'Fifth of Beethoven', even. Which admittedly isn't country, but she knows all kinds of stuff about music and cowboys and...." Teasing Nick was so much fun.

"I swear to god that I've never yelled 'ride 'em cowboy' at any time in my life, Greg. I just.... like the music. It's soulful." Nick was insane, but he was also nodding firmly and trying not to insult Greg's tastes in music. After all, Nick knew a lot of rock bands; he just generally preferred country. He had a Garth Brooks cd in his Chevy, stuck in the glove compartment.

Greg was pretty sure that owning a Garth Brooks cd was some next level of hell that Dante had missed, but he had never said so to Nick. "C'mon. Not to totally freak you out or anything, but your ass would look great in chaps." Oh, yeah, he was smirking over that one.

"Hey, I've ridden a horse before. A real horse." Oh, he was quick to add that, laughing as he slouched down in the booth. "Man. Now I've got all sorts of weird stuff in my head. You know any smart girls you might want to set me up with?"

"I'll see what I can do," Greg promised, drinking deeply from his glass. "So long as you don't mind labia piercings, I think I can manage."

That had been a little mean, because Nick choked on his mouthful of beer and almost sprayed it right out at Greg. "Oh, fuck, man, you did that on purpose!"

"Whaaat?" Greg asked, eye going wide. "It's an honest question! I mean, haven't you ever wondered if all those things they say about genital piercing are true? I know I have." Actually, he kind of knew, but Gil's cock was just the way Greg liked it to be, so that had never come up in conversation. Gil was low maintenance and easy to talk into things, but Greg knew that was a battle he'd lose before he even started.

"Maybe.... Look, I'm not looking for a one night stand, so...." Nick waved one hand a little. "Don't tell me anything about any girl's parts. I kind of want to hit the surprise myself."

"Uh-huh." God, Greg felt so smug. "But now you'll be worrying about it no matter who I send to meet you."

"I'm not.... dammit, I am." Nick groaned a little. "It won't be a worry, but you're not supposed to blatantly think about a girl's labia or whatever she's got pierced on a first date."

"What planet are you from?" Greg asked him. Sometimes he wondered about Nick. Maybe he shouldn't have taken those Very Earnest Talks About Why Nick Prefers Hookers To Greg seriously. Ah, well. "Of course you blatantly think about a girl's labia or whatever she's got pierced on the first date. You just don't let her know you're thinking about it."

"Yeah, but I don't know that it's pierced without seeing it first. I...." Nick waved a hand a little. "Damn. Maybe I'll forget."

There wasn't any way to keep from laughing. "Yeah, you'll think about it no matter who I set you up with!" Yeah. That was just great. "Seriously, though. I know a couple of girls. I'll give 'em a call."

"Thanks. So much for not wanting to actively date, huh?" Nick laughed, and took another smaller swig from his glass. "Things good with you and Griss?"

"Yeah. Things are good." Including hot monkey sex. Greg hoped they did it like that again sometime, even if he'd spent most of Saturday night groaning about how his ass hurt, and teasing Gil about having to buy hemorrhoid ointment if they kept it up. "I was just worn out the other day."

"I figured. Maybe you could get.... I don't know. One of those collars you get a bad dog? Those zapping ones? Put it on Griss's wrist and give him a zap when he wants to pull down that much overtime in one damn shot."

That was the best damn idea Greg had ever heard. He was obviously drunker than he thought he was.

"Oh, yeah, I can see that working out well. He'd take it apart to see what made it work or something," Greg chuckled, leaning his head on his hand and letting loose a slow sigh. "Hmmm."

"You fantasize about that, and I'll be over here thinking about that piercing." Nick leaned his hands on his chin, grinning back at Greg.

Damn, that was a really dirty thought. Gil on his back with leather wrapped around his.... "It's not nice, making me think like that in public!" he protested. It wasn't much by way of protestation, especially since that particular thought was one to hold onto and savor.

Gil knew a lot about sex. Gil knew all sorts of things about hands and fingers and tongues and ways to touch and be touched that still blew Greg's mind, like Saturday night. Even if there were things that Gil shied away from without explanation, Greg could probably get him to try that dirty thought he was toying with.

"We're in a bar, man -- you're supposed to think dirty thoughts!"

Greg grinned. "There we go. And I was worried about you. Want to rack 'em up again?" he asked, tilting his head towards the tables.

"Yeah. One last game, and then should I call you a cab or the Grissom-mobile?" Nick shifted, leaning back before he levered himself to his feet with the table's help.

The way that Greg laughed combined with the general fuck-up of tangled feet that landed him back in the booth wasn't the best sign ever. "Uh-huh. Please. Hooo, boy."

"C'mon. You might shoot better this time," Nick grinned as he reached down to pull Greg up.

Greg was probably hallucinating that he heard another patron mutter something about the little drunk pirate. Little did they know that he was a _tall_ drunk _ass_ pirate.

"Ho ho ho and a bottle of RUM!" This was the best bar EVER.

* * *

Back in the groove. Everything was back in the groove, Manson on the iPod, his devilishly handsome face appearing to have two eyes again, and!

Gil had requisitioned one hell of a great monocular scope for him about three weeks ago. It was great, high level optical, and it didn't feel like something he'd detested using way back in high school. The other monocular scope had that feel, the old school _'I think the glass of the lens is so old that it's started to thicken at the bottom'_ feel.

But the best thing was the new eye. He hadn't been used to having something roll around in under his eyelid like that for a while, and he didn't even have to take it out to clean it according to the ocularist guy. He just had to clean at the edges with saline, because popping it in and out all the time apparently wasn't good. Gil swore that it was a perfect match to his other eye, even if there was a scar on his eyelid from the accident.

When a guy looked good, he felt good, and Greg felt good. The past few months had been great. DNA was hopping, once he had healed up, he'd been able to pull everything back up to speed even with one eye, and he was back to pronging Hodges in the ass every so often.

Score one for Greggo!

So....

If life was so good, and things were going so great, why did Covallo look like somebody had just shoved a giant fist up his butt?

Hell, what was Covallo even doing there that early in the morning? There wasn't anything big going on that Greg knew about. Unless it was something wrong about the serial killers case that the guy felt a need to, uh, coordinate the teams.

Greg got the sneaking suspicion that wasn't it, though. There was something about the way Covallo glanced his way that made him nervous. Covallo had been out to get him since the lab blew up, and Greg wasn't stupid enough to mistake it. It wasn't paranoia if somebody was out to get him, just like it wasn't paranoid of Gil to think that Ecklie hated his guts because he smiled like a nervous rat terrier ever time Gil passed by him. It was just like that Greg knew Covallo had it out for him.

It didn't make much sense since he was the guy who'd gotten blown up in the lab accident, and hadn't started it. Of course, that was when Covallo had found out he was living with Gil, or maybe that was when he had started paying attention to it. They'd filed change of address papers together when they had bought the house, so maybe the guy hadn't noticed it, or maybe Gil had just quietly filed them and not mentioned anything to anybody, which was a possibility. Everybody who needed to know.... knew. The whole lab knew. It wasn't like it was some kind of crazy secret.

Everyone knew back from when Jack Crawford had been roaming the halls. It wasn't a secret, and Gil was good at keeping things professional between them. He was.... just maybe more comfortable with Greg on the job than he'd been before, more patient of Greg's workload. That was the difference, and what kind of supervisor would be bothered by THAT kind of change? It wasn't like they were sneaking off for blowjobs in the cleaning closet, tempting as it was.

Greg wondered if they were off-duty, maybe....

"What do you think's going on over there?"

"No idea." Hodges was a pretty weird guy, so nosy. He probably already knew because Covallo had probably told Ecklie who told Hodges. They made a great gossip network. Hodges told pretty much anyone who was willing to sit still long enough. Nick was still the best, because everyone told him things because he was sweet looking and he smiled bright and wide when he wanted to. Still, Nick had a case and Hodges....

What could he say to get Hodges to honestly tell him?

"Huh. It must not be too interesting then," Greg declared, leaning over to look into his Ultra Cool Microscope. His pirate patch was wrapped around part of it, just to declare it his very own. "I mean, all things considered."

"Mmm. It could be about Catherine's court case, of course. I just heard that the case against Braun was kicked out of court on evidentiary charges." Hodges crossed his arms over his chest.

"Seriously?" The mind boggled. What could get a case like that kicked out? It wasn't like they had expected it to stick, true, but.... Nobody had expected it to get kicked out, either. "Hm. I wonder what that's all about."

"So do I," Hodges grinned. "That's what, two strikes against Willows in such a short period of time? I bet that Grissom will be working overtime to save her ass again."

"Catherine's good at what she does," Greg said, scowling. "It's not her fault about the lab. Everybody puts unlogged evidence under the fume hood. Anybody could have left the hot plate on."

Anybody could have, but Greg was pretty sure that it had been Hodges. He didn't hold anything against him, either. Forgetting the hot plate was stupid and dangerous, but the guy hadn't meant to blow his ass up. No one had meant to blow his ass up. He had a nice ass, he got along with everyone there, it was all accidental.

"Yeah, well. It still probably looks bad to Covallo."

"I wonder what could have gotten it tossed out," Greg mused. "I mean, it's not like anybody expected it to stick, but.... you have to wonder."

"I guess we'll all know soon enough, won't we? I bet there'll be a meeting, and all of dayshift will hear the yelling, but not us, because it's almost time to clock out and head home. Me to my tv set and a dead fish in the fish tank, and you...." He trailed off and waved a hand a little.

Greg seriously considered slipping part of the fire ant farm into the lab coat Hodges usually left in his locker. "To my house, and Madagascar hissing roaches?"

"Yeah. Whatever floats your boat, oh younger bug guy." Hodges made a noise with his departure, and Greg was pretty sure that Hodges shook his head a little before he headed back to finish cleaning up his space.

At least that was the only thing he could rib Greg about. He couldn't say that Greg's work had slid, or that there was anything inferior about the way DNA ran during night shift. Greg was still _the man_ as far as DNA went. So there. It was almost time to head home, which meant he should peek and see if Gil was ready to go yet. Go home to dinner and helping Gil set up a neat little racetrack for his roaches.

Greg wasn't even going to think about the fact that they were trying to train roaches to run on a racetrack. Maybe they should get a wiener dog so that they could do those wiener races, too. At least that Greg could kind of understand. Then again, maybe the sausage dog would eat Gil's roaches, and boy, wouldn't that be ugly?

Seriously considering the possibility of a new pet, Greg finished cleaning up his lab and headed for the locker room.

Covallo wouldn't take too long with Gil, anyway, he hoped.

* * *

The Rifkins at the Tangiers hadn't seemed to understand how lucky they'd been to be alive. They'd been marked, baited, fallen for it, and actually allowed to leave merely because their arguing, that hidden problem between them, had surfaced.

Gil notated their situation with a 'see Jim Brass's report on their circumstances'. They'd pick the case up again in a few hours. For now....

For now, Covallo was standing in his doorway and the man looked like he was about to burst a few very necessary blood vessels. "Grissom." The weight of that word, combined with the grim expression brought Gil's head up sharply. What was going on?

"Robert." Gil put his pen down, and took his glasses off carefully. "What can I do for you?"

"You can tell me how you let this lab get so far out of your control that your DNA tech is doing private off-the-record work for Ms. Willows that results in Sam Braun's case getting tossed out."

"What?" What the.... Gil's eyes fixed on Covallo as he leaned forward a little. That wasn't like Greg, and it wasn't like Catherine. What off-the-record work could have been going on?

"The fact that you allowed your pet lab tech to compare Ms. Willow's DNA to the blood retrieved for the crime scene is what's getting the case tossed out," Covallo reemphasized, stepping up to Gil's desk. "What do you plan to do about it?"

"I...." Gil knew his mouth was open, but the thoughts weren't processing as fast as they should have been. He was in case mode -- why was Catherine's blood compared, at all, to the blood from the crime scene in the case against Braun? That.... "I.... I just found out about it. I'm going to have to find out why Catherine did that."

"No. That's not what you're going to have to do. What you're going to do is fire them both for using county property for personal reasons."

The look in Covallo's eyes said it all. Gil wondered how long he'd been waiting for the chance. He wondered how long he'd been waiting for the chance to dismiss Catherine for the lab accident and to dismiss Greg because.... Because he was sleeping with Gil?

"What I'm going to do is find out what exactly happened and why."

"No," Covallo repeated. "You're going to fire them. Both of them. Before anyone leaves here today."

"Without finding out what happened? Don't you want this well documented?" Gil started to stand up, eyeing Covallo. He could see what was going on in the man's mind. It was politics. That was something Gil was no good at, and it brought a sour feeling to the pit of his stomach.

"I already know what happened. It's been very well documented in the middle of an extremely important court case. What I want is for you to do what I told you."

"I can't fire them on the grounds of a case that wouldn't have led to a conviction to begin with. I will take measures against them, but...."

Covallo was unmoving. "Fire them. Now. This morning. Or I'll be expecting your resignation, Grissom."

He opened his mouth, and closed it again. "Ah. Ah, I see. Now this makes sense, Robert. Why don't we cut right to the point? Why do you want me to leave? My cases are impeccable. I've brought acclaim to this lab. What's this about?"

"Do what I tell you to," was the only answer. "I'll be waiting." He'd be waiting, and he turned to leave Gil's office, not lingering for any further words, leaving Gil standing in his office, facing a catch-22 of the worst kind. Quit, and he knew Greg would probably quit, too, or be fired. Fire Greg and Catherine.... and then work in a joyless lab where the workers in it were worth nothing. Gil closed his eyes for a moment, and then sat down.

He couldn't work in a lab like that. If the director wanted to shoot himself in the foot, so be it. Gil Grissom wasn't going to beg for mercy when there wasn't going to be any, and Gil Grissom wasn't going to be a political pawn.

He was just going to have to quit.

Where was there to go, though? What would they do? Greg would quit with him, and then they'd be stuck in Vegas with a house payment neither of them could make, one with hearing loss, one without an eye, and....

Everything was turning out to be such a mess.

His head was starting to hurt, and he couldn't think just yet. Couldn't think, because there was an answer in the back of his head. Rattling around, there was always an answer. He had money saved. He could move somewhere, or get a job, he could.... find another lab. He could....

The FBI would take him back without a question.

Jack would take him back.

That led down dangerous paths, though, darkness and madness and the inevitable chase after someone like Hannibal or Millander or Dolarhyde. Could he still do that? Was he able to think like them, _be_ that person again?

The most hazardous path of all began with the very suggestion.

He'd talk to Greg. See what happened instead of planning what happened, let the pieces fall where they would. If they had to move somewhere, he had his mother's house in Marina del Rey, still. It was falling apart a little, and it would take some work to undo the neglect, but.... Options.

Gil had to think in terms of options as he eyed a piece of paper and wondered just what a resignation looked like.

* * *

"WHAT!?"

It had been a while since Gil had heard Greg yell like that. He was pretty sure that the last time had involved a spider living underneath the lid of the toilet, which had given Greg a case of heebie-jeebies that just wouldn't quit.

"He WHAT!?!"

"He asked me to fire you." Conversations like that were something Gil liked to hold while he was doing something else, and this was no exception, cutting pieces of steak to make quick stir-fry for dinner. "And Catherine. I think I should be the one yelling right now, since apparently the two of you collaborated to do an off the record test?"

That at least stopped the yelling. "I.... she.... It was the night I came back to work. She didn't tell me what it was, just.... asked if I knew what off the record meant. I didn't think it would hurt anything. It was just a comparison to see if...." Greg paused. "To see if it was her father. So that's why they threw the Braun case, but.... all I did was run Catherine's blood and look at the other for comparison!"

"Covallo considers it grounds for firing, and the judge considered it grounds for throwing the case out." Gil paused, rubbed at his temple with the back of his hand because his fingers were bloody.

"But I didn't actually USE any of the blood from the case. I just looked at the results and compared the alleles from Catherine!" Greg bit his lip, broccoli floret in his hand as he stopped stripping them loose from the fresh stalk. "I.... guess that means I'm fired, huh?"

"It means that I handed in my two weeks notice." He said that carefully, slowly, watching Greg's face as he cut the last piece.

"What!?" Back to yelling, but the shock that chased across Greg's face was unmistakable. "But.... you love your job, Gil, and you're great at it. I mean, I can give a shot at the labs over at UNLV, do research. It's slower, maybe.... maybe I could...."

"I don't want to work in a lab where the director has it out for me and all of the people I work with. This.... is a political move. He wanted me to quit, so he gave me a situation where he knew what the outcome would be. I...." Gil turned away from Greg, but kept his left side tilted towards Greg a little while he dropped the meat in the pan. "If I had fired you and Catherine, it only would have been a matter of time before he found a reason to get rid of me."

That still meant that Greg and Catherine were in danger of being fired; it was only a matter of time until it happened. "Okay." Simple as that. Greg was amazing sometimes. "I'll work on my resignation before we go in tomorrow."

Gil's eyebrows were furrowed together as he put the meat in and started to keep an eye on it. "I'd guessed that you would. Mine wasn't very eloquent."

"I figured it would pretty much be a form of fuck you," Greg admitted. "Without the fuck part."

"Because we still have to bear through two weeks at the lab?" Gil half-asked. At least he could glare at Covallo and Ecklie with impunity for two weeks. Two rather liberating weeks, actually, while he updated his resume and tried to work out what came next. Of course, he'd be careful to be just as good on his last day as he'd been on every other day of his career.

"Hey, let's have shellfish for dinner tomorrow. Shrimp. That kind of thing. With the heads and tails." Gil could almost see the wheels turning in Greg's head, the plan forming. He was afraid to ask what that plan might be. "So.... I guess the question now is, where do we go from here...?"

"We.... should probably start by updating our resumes and thinking if we want to stay here in Vegas, or...? What would you like to do?"

Greg seemed to seriously consider the matter, going back to work on the broccoli. "I think.... I miss the ocean."

The answer wasn't surprising. Gil missed the ocean, too, a lot of days, the steady roll and the smell of it, the way that it sounded, the cool air coming in first thing in the morning. The thought didn't unsettle him as much as he'd suspected it would, when it first crossed his mind. He missed waking up and looking outside, or the way a storm seemed to take up the whole sky and become part of the ocean.

"I still own my mother's house. We could.... get work out there."

Greg considered it. "I love our house," he finally said, finishing off the vegetables and added in some water chestnuts so that they would all be ready when Gil wanted them. "But.... it would be worth it to leave here, to get back to the ocean. Poppa and Isoäiti live in San Gabriel. I miss the missions. Gil?" He looked up and tilted his head so that he could see Gil better. "I think I'd love that."

It was a relief to hear that, and Gil turned away from dinner -- it wasn't as if it would catch fire -- and managed a real smile. "Okay. Then I guess we'll have to call a real estate agent, and.... it will all work out. There are labs out in California. I'll call some old friends."

There was no denying the hopefulness on Greg's face. "You think they'd be interested in having us at the LA CSI lab?" he asked, a burgeoning twitch of his lips making Gil want to kiss him. "That would be.... just incredible."

There was meat burning on the stove, so for the moment, Gil turned the element off. Then he could lean into Greg and close the space between them to take that kiss he wanted. It was so good to kiss Greg, more than just pressure of mouth against mouth, but familiarity and want and hot friction that always promised him more. "I'll make inquiries. We'll be able to work, though. I know that the FBI would take me back if it came to that."

He could almost feel the sudden deathly stillness in Greg, and he didn't have to look to see the rising anger. "Even if we have to go to work at the local gas station and live hand to mouth for the REST OF OUR LIVES...." Greg managed somehow to pull his voice back down. Gil hoped that nothing would be thrown. They'd finally just gotten back to using actual glasses and cups. "....you aren't going back to the FBI. As in, EVER."

Not quite the reaction he'd been expecting, and Gil's common sense told him to move his hands and smooth them down along Greg's side so he couldn't make any too-fast movements. "I only suggested it as a possibility...."

"It's not one." Gil could feel Greg's hands come up to touch him, and they weren't the only things shaking. It was anger and fear and something else that he could see in _both_ eyes, the knitting of brows and the rise of tears undeniable no matter what. Greg was expressive enough that even prosthetics fell to his whim, Gil thought. "It's not ever going to be one. Tell me that. Swear it to me."

Part of learning to live with Greg and live well with Greg was recognizing when he's said something that was unacceptable. He hadn't expected the suggestion of working for the FBI to garner him the same facial expression he suspected he'd get if he said that Sara was coming back to the lab. "I.... Greg, I've...." Gil was fairly sure that whatever he was going to say would be the wrong thing. "Not even consulting?"

"Not even consulting." Had Greg ever been so deadly serious? Gil could feel the moment stretching into something almost surreal. "Over my dead body. Dolarhyde was their version of _consulting_ , Gil. Me dying is one thing. You dying is something else, and you know they'd put you in that kind of danger without thinking about it twice."

Maybe quitting the job he loved had thrown him for a loop, not to expect that the first thing to cross Greg's mind would be their mutual deaths in one order or another. Gil groaned, tried to find the words to answer that, and then simply closed the space between them. Actions could speak louder than words when words were already proving cruel, jumbled mistresses. "All right. Then.... not even consulting."

The way that thin body went limp against him almost hurt. "Jesus." Greg's hand rose, sliding into Gil's hair and clutching there. "Oh, Jesus, you scared the shit out of me."

So scared. He'd scared Greg, just by suggesting.... "Shhh, I didn't mean to." Gil shifted, leaned back against the counter and slid his arms around Greg, holding him as tight as Greg's limp form wanted to be.

"They'll take advantage of you. They'll do stupid shit, and send you out after things that are too dangerous for one man, too dangerous for ten. I.... you...." Thank God he had turned off supper. "You can't die on me. Got that?"

Greg was breathing hard, shuddering in his arms, probably torn between trying to crush Gil and hit him. Gil couldn't guess, just that he shouldn't have said it and he shouldn't have been surprised by Greg's reaction. Greg had always been more willing to tell him 'no' than Molly had ever been. Greg wasn't scared for his own life so much as Gil's, and Gil couldn't place why, except that he understood that. He didn't want to get dragged into a case where Greg's life was in danger, did he? No. No.

No, he couldn't go through that again. "I got it."

"Good. Good. 'cause I've got _you_."

* * *

"You're quitting? Why the hell didn't you mention it, man!?"

Greg couldn't remember when he had last seen Nick so worked up over something. "Because it was kinda sudden," he said, going back to work on the blood drops Nick had brought him. "Covallo got a bug up his ass, and.... things got complicated."

"Yeah, but.... what the hell happened?" Nick had been expecting a game or some obnoxiously long reveal or something for his results when he came to get them, but not to get that bombshell when he dropped the blood evidence off with Greg.

Greg could tell from the way Nick's face was screwing up.

"I did an off-record DNA analysis for Catherine. Covallo wanted Gil to fire both of us over it, and...." Greg shrugged. "You know he wouldn't do that. So, Gil quit. Gil quits, I quit. There are other options outside of Vegas. Whoever replaces Gil would have just fired me anyway."

"So...." Nick's mouth turned down sharply for a moment. "Where're you going to go? You're just.... going to move and that's it? Gil let Covallo do that to him? Catherine, too? Man, this...." Nick sighed, and looked down. "This sucks."

"Blows chunks," Greg agreed, tilting his head to the side. "Gil's still got his mom's place out in Marina del Rey. Poppa and Isoäiti still live over near the missions, and...." He couldn't keep from smiling. "We kinda miss the ocean. Heh, you could come with us. I'll teach you how to surf. I know nice girls there."

"With piercings in weird places." Nick's mouth tilted down a little more. "Probably couldn't get a job out there, Greg. I doubt I've published enough papers, and.... I don't know. Vegas is as far from Texas as I want to be?"

"It's tough to get much farther from the ocean, too," Greg agreed, mouth tilting in a smile. "Hey. I'll miss you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. When are you guys.... leaving? I...." Nick sounded a little off-kilter as he watched Greg fiddle through his work. "Want to help out. Damn, this is shit."

"You can help us pack. I promise I won't make you box up the toys under the bed," Greg leered, allowing it to turn into laughter at the look on Nick's face. "And, hey. E-mail. AIM. Vacation time."

"Yeah." Nick tried for a sort of smile. "I know, just.... damn. It's not going to be the same around here if you both go...."

"Hey, Nick?" Catherine, waving at him from the doorway that she was leaning in. "We have footage in the AV lab."

Greg smiled at him. "Go on. We can talk about it later, okay? And...." Don't mention it to Catherine, he didn't say. That was Gil's job, and Gil could do it better than either one of them.

Nick gave a short, tight nod. "Yeah. I'll talk to you after shift, okay?" Greg got a short wave.

It still didn't make him any less nervous knowing that his letter of resignation was sitting on Covallo's desk, waiting for the man to come in to work in a few hours and see it. Maybe by the time Covallo read it, Greg and Gil would be at home starting to sort through the stuff they wanted to pack and the stuff they wanted to sell. That would be a good thing, keep them busy for a while.

Maybe he could offer Gil a blowjob and see what went from there.

He could kind of guess where things would go from there. They'd end up not packing or starting anything and they'd end up having sex on the leather sofa. Then they'd go back to the logistics of getting two cars to California and the U-Haul they'd need to rent.

Maybe if he paid for Poppa's plane ticket, he could get him to come and drive one of the cars back. Greg didn't want to ask Nicky, because Nick was going to have a hard enough time with them leaving, and spending his days off driving to California with them would suck. A lot.

Yeah, he'd ask Poppa. Isoäiti had wanted to see their house, anyway, so she might as well come with him, maybe spend a couple of nights in Vegas so that she could say she had been. Of course, Isoäiti still spoke mostly Norwegian, but that never stopped anybody from gambling. Greg doubted that it would stop her. Money and numbers were universal, and the house odds sucked pretty much everywhere.

Maybe Gil could show them how to be poker sharks. Maybe.... maybe everything was going to work out. They'd still have a house, a place to live, even if Gil wasn't sure how much work needed to be done. They were definitely going to have to sell their current place, and the money from that could go towards fixing up the house on the beach. After all, it had a lot of promise, a big wide ranch with a gorgeous view. He'd seen pictures, kind of accidentally, in Gil's envelope of pictures of Josh, in another Ritz-camera box of stuff that had been stuffed in with Will's too-organized box of Lecter letters.

The letters still came every now and then, like the flowers when Greg had been in the hospital. It was undeniably worrisome, but Gil didn't seem worried about it. Greg figured that as long as Gil was kind of offhanded about it, things were okay. He wasn't going to think about what might change about that.

"That looks like one serious face."

Greg looked up at Warrick and smiled. "Hey. You'd think I couldn't be a serious guy, the way all of you act."

"I think it might be a challenge for you," Warrick told him solemnly, but his mouth was tipped up a little. "You got the results back from that B&E I had yesterday?"

"Yep. I'm impressive like that," Greg said, swirling around in his chair to hand Warrick a paper. "Hate to tell you this, but it's a match to the vic. I think Jacqui's having better luck over in fingerprints." He wriggled his eyebrows. "I heard it was something good."

"Oh, that's great. If she's got a hit...." Warrick shook his head a little as he took the paper from Greg. "Yeah, thanks. This is still good for the report."

No questions, no mentions other than the comment about a serious facial expression. So, Gil's quitting hadn't hit the grapevine yet. That was a plus point, right? Warrick would be as uptight about it as Nick, Greg guessed, mostly because he kind of idolized Gil sometimes. Greg thought it was cute. Of course, Greg understood idolizing Gil. The man was damned good at everything that he did, and that brought along a couple of dirty thoughts that he probably shouldn't be having at work.

Warrick's pager went off as he started to leave, and he stopped long enough to look at it. "Damn. Don't get comfortable, Greggo, cause it looks like we'll be pulling a double."

A double? Greg peeked at the pager. "Hey. Do you think it's the serial killers?" Those worried the hell out of him, but Gil hadn't been behaving weirdly lately, so maybe he wouldn't randomly go confront them and get killed. Maybe. Okay, maybe Greg should panic.

"Female DB at the Fez. See you." Warrick gave him half a wave, and then he left Greg alone with his worry.

It hadn't been so bad, lately. Catherine and Jim would stick like glue to Gil in the field. If they moved to LA and Gil got a job there -- while Greg was kind of hoping Gil would work his way into the university system, it seemed a little like a lost cause -- Greg was so going to warn people that Gil needed not to work serials alone. Maybe he could tattoo it to Gil somewhere, on the back of his hand like a reminder note. _'Don't go after serial killers alone.'_

Maybe he could tattoo his name on Gil's ass.

That was a wonderful dirty thought. Maybe he could spend the rest of his soon-to-be-double thinking about that and not about the smug look Covallo was going to have on his face when he came strolling through to accept Greg's resignation.

Yeah, that and dreaming of the ocean. Between the two, and letting his brain meander, Greg could do all right.

He'd have to get a new surfboard.

* * *

With a faint flourish, Gil handed Nick the envelope full of coins from the Magic Fingers bed, and wondered at the look of faint guilt on his face. There was something going on, and Gil knew it. He'd been aware of Nick's moping all morning, and he was pretty sure that had something to do with the fact that Greg was going to be leaving town. In a way, it was cute, like a six year old who thought that his best friend moving two streets over was the end of the world. That expression didn't have anything on the look there now.

"I should probably get those quarters back to the lab, work on the prints," Nick murmured, not quite meeting Gil's eyes.

Gil just looked at him, wondering just what made Nick feel guiltier -- slipping up to the media in an ongoing investigation, or...? But he let him leave, and there was comfortable silence in the room while Catherine scooped the unprintable quarters into the paper evidence bag.

How did he tell her in the middle of a big case? Did he tell her, give her a little advance warning of what was coming next for her, or? Gil wished it hadn't happened just then, in the middle of a big case where there were already so many people dead, so many victims who needed a voice.

He eyed the Magic Fingers, then fished a quarter out of his pocket, slipped it in and turned it on once he'd taken his gloves off. Catherine shot him a look as he shifted to lie down, and he put his hands up in mock surrender.

"I need fifteen minutes to think."

"....right," she said, watching him for a moment. "Do you.... have any idea of how many people have probably had sex on that bed? No. Don't answer that question. Never mind. I'm not about to run ALS on it. Then I couldn't do this." She finished off with the quarters and laid down beside him. "What's got you strung in knots?"

Did he start with _'I quit'_ , _'you're going to get a new supervisor'_ , or _'the new supervisor won't matter because Covallo has his sights on you'_? Gil's eyebrows drew together, and then he shook his head faintly. "I quit yesterday."

"Mmm. I heard Godzilla attacked Tokyo yesterday, too. Must have been something off with the atmosphere for all of that to happen at once."

She wasn't taking him seriously. Gil's eyes closed tighter for a moment. "Catherine. I handed Covallo my resignation before the end of shift yesterday."

"You're serious? In the middle of THIS? What.... why on earth would you...."

He was glad that his eyes were closed, though he wished he'd sat on the other side of the bed. It was a little hard to hear her over the hmmmmm of the bed. "The Braun case, Catherine."

"Shit." He could almost hear her mind click into position, knew that she understood. "You should have told me. I can get another job...."

"He wanted me to fire both you and Greg for it. I couldn't. It shouldn't have been thrown out when all either of you did was compare the results of what had already been run through the system. It wasn't something I'd advise doing, Catherine, but...."

But. But he wouldn't fire her for it.

"I had to know."

Gil could understand that. There were a lot of things that he had felt he _had_ to know in his life. More often than not, those things had been more trouble than they were worth to begin with.

No. They'd always been trouble, because when a person started to go beyond the bounds of normal actions to get those answers, it was time to stop. Time to take a step back and wonder if it was worth it, if they needed to be answered....

"Covallo is gunning for you now. Greg resigned today. We're moving back to California."

Catherine took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "This is all just falling to pieces on us, isn't it? When are you guys leaving?"

His shoulders were in knots, and the shaking bed helped a little with it. "We're going to drive out there in a couple of weeks, see what work needs to be done, hire some people to do it. I guess we'll be back and forth until we sell the house...."

"So you're going to stick around for a while.... are you guys gonna even try to look for jobs in the area?" Catherine sighed. "Oh. Man. I never really thought you'd leave us, Gil. No matter what. I'm.... so sorry."

"Change happens for a reason." He gave a tiny shrug, but did go on. "We both prefer to work in criminalistics, and the only other nearby department is one that I believe I'm not even allowed to talk about. I have friends in California, and I'm making inquiries into what departments have openings out there."

"Uh-huh. In other words, you.... made THAT suggestion. The one involving that 'F' word, and I don't mean the one that means sex." Catherine cast him a look, her mouth curving into a smile. "So. How many dishes are you short?"

He closed his eyes again, and gave a faint sigh. "None, actually." No broken dishes, but he almost would have preferred that to Greg's stricken, angry fear, the look on his face that clearly stated he thought he might lose Gil because Gil was stupid and hadn't thought through the consequences of his words.

It was without question a bad idea, any way that he looked at it.

"That's pretty impressive. Hey, you remember that time that you worked a triple shift and then fell asleep in your car in the garage? None of us could find you, and Greg didn't hear you drive in...? You had to buy a whole new set, didn't you?"

"I think the office grape vine exaggerates things," Gil mused. It had been a few plates, because Greg had been emptying the dishwasher and.... The look on his face still hadn't been a stricken and angry and concerned as when he'd suggested working for the FBI. "I was lucky that it was December and I didn't roast in the garage."

"It's a good thing that we all love you," Catherine laughed, shaking her head. "You know, I think that if Covallo wants to try it with me, he's going to have to go through a lawyer. I'm not willing to let him pull something like that on me."

That somehow implied that Gil had let Covallo, which.... stung. He hadn't. He didn't want to work in a lab where he had to lawyer up just to work there, to keep working there. That was insane, without question, but if Catherine wanted to.... That was her decision.

Gil just stayed quiet, enjoying the moment of false relaxation.

"I hate for you to go," she said finally, "but I know things have been tense for you since Crawford was here. I know Greg's said a time or two that he misses his family...." Catherine turned her head and looked at him. "I think it'll be good for you to go home, at least for a while. Covallo won't be here forever. And.... Gil? I'm proud of you for standing up to him."

Gil quirked an eyebrow at that, managed a tiny smile. "Thank you. Even if it doesn't feel like I accomplished anything.... He didn't hurt either of us. I'm sure.... that you'll manage to keep your job, Catherine. He knew I wouldn't fire either of you, and that Greg would leave if I left, or...."

Or maybe Covallo would hope that Greg would stay in Vegas if Gil left. Who knew? Gil didn't want to think, because Greg leaving him hadn't ever been a possibility and if it had seemed a possibility, then Gil.... would have found work locally. Somehow. Greg wasn't going anywhere, though, and so Gil shuffled all worries to the contrary beneath a quiet board at the very bottom of the deepest room in his mind, deciding not to contemplate that, ever.

"Covallo is a dickhead, and I'm going to make sure that he gets what he deserves," Catherine decided. "Having Greg run my DNA doesn't have any meaning. If anything, they should keep DNA profiles for all of us on file for exclusionary purposes."

"In case someone sneezes at a scene?" Gil would have to suggest that at whatever place he found work. Whatever lab he ended up at. He had a resume long enough and distinguished enough not to have trouble once the reality of it sank in properly that he was going to have to pack up his office and his bugs and his specimens and his memories of old cases and never see the lab again, very soon.

"Hey. It could happen. It would be perfectly legitimate, and I could have cut a finger for all they know." Catherine sighed. "Not that I could lie about it, dammit."

"Therein lies the crux." It hadn't been fifteen minutes of peace and quiet and getting the knot out of his shoulders, but breaking the news to Catherine had been easier than he'd thought. "The only thing it means in the end is that we have to wrap this case up before I go, and that I'll have to get plane tickets back to testify at trial. Would that make me a tourist?"

"Somehow, I can't see you being the tourist type. I'm glad you're not going to pick up and run away right off, though. Nick looks like somebody kicked his puppy." She sighed as the bed stopped moving. "Looks like your quarter's up."

"Mm. I even offered Covallo help headhunting...." Gil trailed off as he sat up, and looked over at her.

The world shifted a little, clicked, and suddenly the game that he hated most was making sense for once. The edges of his mouth tugged down a little, and he knew he shouldn't frown at Catherine, but.... "But he said he already had it covered."

"I feel sure." The prickly edges in that statement would have made a lesser man shiver, he felt sure. "We'll just see about whatever it is that he's got in mind, Gil. I.... I refuse to be a pawn, and while I'm going to take a different path than you are...."

Words came out of his mouth before he processed them through, while he stood up. "I hope you supervise nightshift better than I did."

"....What?" It was obvious that she hadn't made the connection yet, because Catherine gave him a look that said he had clearly lost his mind. "What are you talking about?"

Gil could only give her a tight smile as he headed for the door. The room was clear, and they were already well into a double shift. "You'll see. Don't worry about it, Catherine. Let's get back to the lab and see what print Nicky turned up."

* * *

They weren't fooling him. None of them. Not one of them.

They were all LOOKING at him. They were watching him, and he had the urge to fling his latex gloves in one direction as a distraction and then take off going the other way.

One pair of eyes.... that was one thing. Gil often watched him, and that was okay. Two pairs watching him weren't unheard of. Right now, Greg felt at least three sets of eyes on him, and it was starting to make him twitch.

Gil was standing in the center of a powwow with Nick and Warrick, and Greg had caught the first time that Gil had peeked over his shoulder at him. That was.... normal. As professional as Gil was, sometimes he worried about Greg when they had those cases where overtime was the norm. Liked to make sure that he wasn't pushing Greg's stamina or anything, and that was.... nice. It was nice that Gil was finally starting to think about having priorities other than working himself to the brink, but when Warrick and Nick peered over at him through the window, and when Gil just started to blatantly look at him.... that was another thing.

Right. There was only one thing to do, and that was to stare right back. Greg raised his eyebrows as if to ask them what they were thinking about, but a quick flutter in his belly told him that asking them was probably a damn bad idea.

Twenty minutes later, he knew it had been a damn bad idea. On the other hand, getting out of the lab was kind of cool, especially since they figured he could find what they needed with just one eye. That was nice, that all three of them had nominated him, even if it was because none of them were skinny enough to go fishing and slipping through yard fences the way he could looking for a soda bottle that was used as a silencer to kill the serial killers.

Like there weren't nine billion refuse soda bottles in Vegas?

On the other hand, how many of them had GSR running around on them? Of course, testing for GSR in sticky soda puddles would suck, and he was definitely going to be a very dirty boy by the time he was done. That thought prompted a grin even as he headed his little silver car towards the crime scene and the cop who would be waiting there for him. Maybe if he were lucky, Gil would tell him how dirty he was and give him a bath.

Pervy thoughts had been on his mind a lot lately, probably because he knew that they were going to have a few days to indulge in that kind of thing while they packed and moved and tried to keep their minds off of everything they had to do. It was a lot easier to make job inquiries and fax resumes when their down time was spent having hot monkey sex, and trying to figure out how best to pack the flat screen TV and Gil's insects. It wasn't a drive across town, after all, and they were pretty damn spoiled for bugs.

If he did find something, he knew he'd at least get shower sex.

Maybe if he didn't find anything, Greg thought, he could wiggle his ass a little and get shower sex anyway. Either way, he was going to be a happy guy as long as he kept finding the upside to stuff. There had been the upside of not having to feign respect to Covallo or anyone he didn't want to, anyone who hadn't earned and didn't deserve their respect. If he was going to have to quit the best job ever, he was going to stir up a little insurrection. Maybe he could kiss Gil at work before they left. It wasn't long now. Another four work days and an on call day and that was it.

He nearly danced in his seat when he finally parked and shut off the car, grabbing his kit and heading towards the door. Crime scene tape was everywhere, and there was a cop by the door, one he didn't particularly recognize.

"Hi," Greg said, offering him a friendly smile. "Greg Sanders. DNA tech at the lab. They sent me to try and track down some evidence since we're a little shorthanded right now."

The guy took one look at him and didn't believe it, Greg knew, so he dug out his ID out of his ass pocket. He had the coolest T-shirt on, which wasn't professional, but it was also over a hundred and ten degrees out.

The cop was lucky that Greg was wearing pants at all.

"I'll walk you out to the back yard."

Greg gave a heavy sigh, faintly relieved for the moment to be in the house. "Sure. Would you mind if I did a short walkthrough of the house, just to be sure that it didn't get passed by somehow? I mean, they're ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent certain it didn't, so it shouldn't take long. Just checking the trash and the plants, you know."

"Sure." Sure, because who'd want to have to dig through the yard and the whole rest of the city block to look for a soda bottle that had been ditched somewhere in the house? The cop was going to let him, even if he was going to shadow him. "Take your time. Hot day, ain't it?"

"I'm not looking forward to searching the block for a silencer Coke bottle," Greg admitted with a grimace. "But, hey. They're paying me overtime to come out after shift, so I guess I can kind of suck it up. If it's this hot midmorning, I can only imagine what it's gonna be like in a few hours." He'd probably still be out in it for at least part of the day.

The officer escorted Greg a whole two steps to the living room. "It's all yours." Greg half waited for the guy to tack on 'kid', but god, he didn't. It felt good. It felt like maybe he was a grown-up outside of the lab, and it kind of made Greg think that he should seriously think about changing his occupation. He loved science. He loved doing DNA.

He didn't love feeling like he was stuck in a fish tank that might arbitrarily blow up on him at any minute.

There was time to talk about that with Gil later, he figured, starting to search the room for trashcans. The intruder had taken a straight line through the house, so he didn't have to search all of it over again, just the line and a little to the left and the right of it. The back yard was a clear shot, and he'd been racing time to escape before the under cover unit came back from the false call. Greg still looked, flashlight in hand like it was the best weapon any science geek could have. He didn't have a gun, so a Maglight would just have to do, and he pulled on gloves before he began riffling around, searching for the bottle.

Half an hour later, there was still no sign of it, so he took a deep breath and opened the back door, a blast of hot air hitting him in the face. Gil was so going to pay for this, Greg thought, but he smiled all the same. It was wrong to be having fun at this.

It was like a one-man treasure hunt, or a scavenger hunt, just Greg with the item 'one shot-out soda bottle'. He was going to be seriously pissed off if the guy had taken it home with him after he went through all that, starting in the Kleinfelds' lush backyard.

Things like that made him wonder why people killed. Not just the vigilante after the Kleinfelds, but them, too, and all of the other people who felt some kind of bizarre compulsion to commit murder. Why? It hadn't ever been something Greg was tempted to do. Maybe everybody was born hard-coded with some kind of deadly sin or anti-commandment at their core, and he had lucked out and gotten lust instead of murder.

It wasn't even real hardcore lust. Crazy lust was killing people to get off, while him.... way other side of the spectrum. Mad in lust with the guy he also happened to love, the guy he spent most of his free time with and was looking to move out of state with.

Just one more adventure.

Greg wondered how much Gil knew about surfing, and moved on in his search.

* * *

There was yelling in the lab.

It wasn't like there hadn't been yelling in the lab before on a variety of occasions. It was just kind of rare that it came from Gil's office, and it made Greg a little tentative about poking his head in there.

On the other hand.... well. He had evidence: Incredibly Good Need to Show Now kind of evidence. Case breaking kind of evidence, which made Greg feel damn good. He could understand how Gil coasted on those feelings to run for two or three shifts. They were coming up to being in swing shift now, and maybe it was time to suggest to Gil that they should....

Oh. Gil was arguing with Jim. Today obviously sucked a lot. Maybe if he showed them what he had found, it would get better. Maybe they'd stop yelling like a couple of complete idiots so that the rest of the lab heard them.

He marched straight up to Gil's door and walked inside, ignoring all of the yelling. "Hey, guys? I found something."

"Not now." Gil fixed him with a look, and even started to make a hand gesture that went along with it. He looked furious, and Jim half-turned to give him a glare, too.

So they wanted to argue? So what. Greg wasn't going to let them. "No. You need to see this. Both of you. Now!" Greg insisted. He paused and took a breath. "Please." And then he turned around, which was the last thing that he wanted to do, but sometimes Gil just needed a little reality slap, a tiny shock to get him to shake off whatever it was. No matter the reason Gil and Jim were arguing, it wasn't a good thing, not when he had a great piece of evidence that he'd fished out of a storm drain.

Greg realized they were right behind him, and he was grateful for that. One, they weren't arguing; two, they were paying attention. He wondered if Jim knew Gil was leaving, and if that might have something to do with the yelling. "It's in here...." he said, hurrying forward to the room where his evidence laid on a table, backlit and obvious.

A uniform shirt. With a police badge.

Greg paused and glanced up at Gil carefully. "Sorry I didn't find the soda bottle."

"This is more than enough." Gil seemed quietly, faintly pleased as he looked down at it, and then glanced over to Jim. Jim's expression was a tight frown as he pulled on a latex glove so he could handle it.

"Star One Uniforms. It's the biggest uniform shop in town," Jim declared, looking it over carefully. "From casino dealers to cops. Shirt's wet."

"I found it in a storm drain two blocks west of the house," Greg explained. He couldn't quite believe that he'd actually had that kind of luck. He had, though, and he'd had to half shimmy into a storm drain to get the thing. There'd been one wild moment where he'd been balancing his Maglight in one hand and was using his foot and a knee to keep mostly on the safe side of the drain when he remembered that scene from _IT_ where the little boy was beckoned down into the drain. Then the much more rational fear of falling in because he was going to get hit by a car speeding through entered his mind.

"Opposite direction from the 444." Jim shot Gil a glare, and then added, "Huh. Buttons."

"Important because?"

"The current uniforms all zip up."

"But they have fake buttons?" Greg found that amusing. "That's kind of cheap...."

Gil's fingers touched lightly at the uniform. "This collar's dry."

"It's hot out. Buck twenty-five, at least." Jim nodded. "Let's hope whoever was wearing that shirt sweats. The badge looks legit. I'll run the number."

Gil smiled over at Greg for one brief moment as Brass left to check out the badge. "Good work, Greg."

"Thanks, boss." Greg grinned. "Does it get me a kiss?"

"Not until you wash your face."

That made Greg grin wider, warming as he looked at Gil. He wanted to ask if Gil would help him, but Gil glanced down at his watch suddenly and then looked back up.

"It's three already?"

"It's three, and I seriously need a nap if we're going to be back here at ten tonight," Greg informed him. "So do you, and I think I need a couple of gallons of water before that."

Gil eyed him for a moment, and then reached a hand to Greg, grabbing his hand and pressing the back lightly with his thumb. "You're dehydrated. Go hit the locker room, get some water, and I'll log this in. It's past time to go home."

"You coming with me? Otherwise, I'll just drink lots of coffee to make it to ten, and it'll get worse." Greg was teasing him, mostly, and he couldn't stop the smile he gave. Elation was definitely a feeling to which he could become accustomed. Even with one eye, he'd found evidence everybody else had missed.

There was a faint head tilt from Gil, like he was bowing before the mighty case-breaking skills of Greg. "I'll log this in as evidence and then we'll go home. When we come back in a few hours, you get to run DNA on the collar, but go and get some water in you so you don't get sick."

"Yes, sir. You're the boss." Greg scrambled out of reach at that statement; he was pretty sure Gil would smack him on the ass if he was still able to get hold of him. "See you in ten minutes."

When he glanced over his shoulder on the way out of the room, Greg wasn't imagining Gil's smile. Yeah, if he could just lift Gil's mood a little every shift through the last few days they had to work there, everything would be okay. Gil hadn't said as much, but he seemed sad to be leaving Vegas after so long.

Even if they had a lot to look forward to about California.

* * *

"Hey, Gil? Do you want me to wrap these glasses and put them in with the boxes of stuff that we're going to take with us when we go check out the house?"

Gil turned towards him, looking closely. The green goblets had belonged to his mother, and he was pretty sure that he didn't want to trust movers with them. It was surprising that they'd already had nibbles on selling the house, and also a little unnerving. Gil had planned to be in Vegas for at least a few more months, and now he and Greg were packing during the moments they weren't sleeping or at work.

Bids and offers and a real estate agent who wanted to do walkthroughs and wanted a key. Gil knew how unscrupulous some real estate agents could be, and he didn't particularly want people waltzing through their home. Not yet. Not until they moved some odd things with them and Gil shuffled his boxes of secrets into the back of the Tahoe and drove it out to California.

"That's probably the best idea. I wouldn't trust the movers with them."

"Figured that was the case." The way that Greg grinned at him was bright, easy, and Gil knew that leaving Vegas was the right decision. It was just difficult to shift himself out of his habits. He was sure that neither of them had anything to fear from Hannibal, but Vegas had been his protection for a long time, even if it hadn't actually been protection so much as a construct within his mind, a feigned sense of security. False security was better than nothing. At least the 'truce' had proven real.

It all meant that Gil would simply have to cope with change. Maybe he should have long-since left Vegas for a lab where he could just go back to working. No responsibility, no duties other than to do his job and to do it well. Gil paused for a moment, peering into the cupboard. "Did you listen to the answering machine messages?"

"Oh. No. Sorry. I had to pee when I came in, so I kind of ran past it in a hurry." Gil knew Greg had taken his words to heart and had probably managed to drink the better part of a liter of water before they got home. "I'll check them now. Think we've had another offer?"

Gil almost hoped that they didn't. He closed that cupboard, deciding that other than the green glasses, the movers could have at the rest of the dishes. Greg had already salvaged a few of the things that his grandparents had given him and that he'd brought to Vegas with him from San Francisco. Mugs, mostly.

They had an awful lot of mugs, and it was a good thing that both of them drank a lot of coffee. "I was actually hoping that one of the labs would get back to us."

"That would be even better. I know it bugs you when we're not busy all the time." Greg also thought that it would be better for them to take a couple of months off and get back into the swing of life in general, making room for Gil's bugs and getting settled. They'd discussed that almost to death. They'd discussed almost everything to death, but it had been necessary. They needed to coordinate and make sure that they agreed on what was going on, and.... They didn't agree on everything, of course, but they were willing to compromise. If Greg wanted to take a couple of months to settle in, then they'd probably take at last three weeks. Gil was willing to bend at least that much.

"I'd just be able to rest better if I knew we had a position secured, even if it doesn't start for a few months." Gil leaned against the counter, and then glanced around to see what else needed to be packed other than everything. They were planning on taking both cars out to Marina del Rey in a week when they went to check out the house and start getting things ready for living there. That way there was only one car to come later, and hiring movers had negated the need for a U-Haul.

"They're going to have to pay you to come back and participate in a few things here," Greg reminded him. "After all, you're an expert opinion."

"Covallo might choke himself rather than have to pay extra for the pleasure of my presence in Vegas again." And the Sheriff didn't like him, which didn't matter much to Gil. Politics was nearly the most despicable field any person could willingly have an interest in, second only to bad lawyers. "But.... I do owe you a vacation, don't I?"

"With sand and salt water," Greg replied, hitting play on the machine.

~You have. Four. New messages. Message. One....~

~"Misters Sanders and Grissom? This is Becky Byrne, your real estate agent. Would it be possible to show the house sometime around noon...? Please call me back, you have my numbers."~

Greg glanced at Gil and tilted his head. "Did she mean today?" he asked, blinking. "We can manage it tomorrow.... I've got her number...."

"We can manage it tomorrow if we don't work another double," Gil agreed.

 _~Message time. Eight. Thirty-seven. AM.~_ There was a pause and then the machine brought up the second message after a beep. _~Message. Two.~_

 _~"Will. I saw you posted your resume to the Forensics board -- what gives, huh? First you--"~_ Gil wandered over towards Greg and the answering machine when he saw Greg jam his finger down on the fast forward button, skipping through the message from Jack.

Of all the people to bring out of the woodwork.

"If he does it again, I'm mailing him coffee laced with phenolphthalein," Greg announced.

~Message. Three.~

~"Um, hi, this is Don Eppes with the Los Angeles FBI office. We, ah, saw your resume on the Forensics board and we were interested in maybe talking to you, scheduling an interview. If you could give us a call at 213-250...."~

Gil could see Greg scribbling the rest of the number on the pad by the phone. "You know, you're getting a lot of good calls."

"You will, too." Gil leaned over Greg's shoulder a little, on his seeing side, which put Gil's good ear close. "You did hear that that was the LA FBI field office, didn't you? Because you're writing it down."

"Yeah, well, it can't hurt to interview, can it? Besides, I'm thinking about...."

~Message. Four.~

~"This is Dean Sims with CalSci, Mister Sanders. We received your application and we'd like to set up an interview. We're mailing information to you, as I understand you won't be in California full time for a few weeks yet. Please call us at the number you'll find enclosed so that we can set things up? I'm in my office from noon to four, but there's a secretary who can take messages and set appointments and the phone will ring through to her. Thanks."~

~Message time. Eleven. Forty-two. AM. End of final message.~

"....maybe going for something academic if I don't hear from the crime labs we're looking at." Greg shrugged. He'd mentioned something like that in passing, but Gil hadn't thought about it a lot.

He liked the idea of working in a lab together on the same cases, but he also liked the idea of getting something like normal hours and.... Gil smiled to himself when he put his arms around Greg, fingers loosely resting against the edges of Greg's hips. "We don't have to make any decisions right away. We could interview with all the offers and then decide what 'yes' you like best and what one I like best."

"Think we'll get regular hours, if we're lucky?" Greg asked. He was reading Gil's mind, and slipping closer against him, getting comfortable against Gil's heavier frame. "Then we can have hot monkey sex with all the lights in the house on."

"I'm not even going to suggest that I might be open to working nights," Gil promised Greg, shifting until he could feel all of Greg's back pressed against him. It felt good, and was more than enough to shake off the specter of Jack's half-heard message. He'd piss himself if he knew that Gil was even thinking of interviewing for another field office instead of going back to Quantico. "I think we've packed enough for one day. Maybe it's time to come up with a general plan of packing attack, and then rest for what's left of the night...."

"Afternoon?" Greg suggested. "I seriously have to pee again. You'd better be glad I'm not a bed-wetter by nature." He shifted, pressed a kiss to the softening line of Gil's jaw. "Let's get some sleep, anyway. You're right about that. I vote for boxing up all the breakables, shifting most of the electronics into the car, and leaving them at Poppa Olaf's house. We can concentrate on getting your bugs into the SUV for the final trip, I think, and the movers will get everything else. We should box up clothes and stuff, but that can wait, too, at least a week or so."

Mention the need for a plan of packing attack and Greg had it. "Poppa Olaf will love getting his hands on your stereo," Gil agreed, turning his head into that easy kiss when Greg turned around a little. "I'll be the first person to admit that I don't usually choose to change my circumstances. You know that, but this change.... seems like it'll be good for us both. Anyway, I miss the convenience of having the world's largest swimming pool in my back yard."

"Mhmmm," Greg murmured. "If Poppa appropriates all of the stereo equipment, we'll be in trouble. Hey. Want to go crawl in bed? All of this other stuff can wait."

Gil took one back step, smirking faintly as he dragged Greg back with him. "And it's going to, because neither of us can get through a shift without some sleep. I think I'll set the alarm clock for nine and we can race time to get there...."

Greg grinned, letting Gil move him right along. It felt good, Gil knew, and he also knew that Greg wasn't about to fight it. His good left eye rolled back to peek at Gil. "I love it when you're all hot and wrong like that."

Slowly, slowly, they were making their way across to the short hallway that spilled into their bedroom. It was fun, and Greg, despite everything, brought a little lightness, a little warmth to everything he did. Even just heading to bed was notably lightened because of Greg. "What's wrong with.... merely planning to sleep in?"

"Because I know you're secretly hoping we'll be late for better reasons." After all, Greg knew him almost better than he knew himself, and he wasn't afraid to call Gil on things if he needed to. "We might even manage it."

"Have we ever been late for that reason? There was that one time when your car's airflow sensor went and I had a dead battery, but...." Gil trailed off slyly, and bumped the bedroom door open with his shoulders. _But_ they'd had sex after they realized that it would take twenty minutes for Catherine to get there, and that she was out in the field, and that Jim was already at work.

It had only been an exchange of blowjobs, which sounded like a good idea just then because Gil was tired and he wanted to sleep. He wanted as much sleep as possible with Greg, Greg who'd done so damned well out in the field by himself. Gil could almost feel his own head swelling with pride, the little looks Greg had cast him from that dirty face so hopeful that Gil had wanted to kiss him then and there, dirt and grease notwithstanding. He'd never be able to tell how he refrained.

"Maybe we can do that again tonight. I'm pretty sure I can sneak out and kill the batteries...."

"Just leave the lights on," Gil agreed. "But we're so close to solving the case because you found a key piece of evidence." That made him want to nail Greg to the mattress. It was laughably wrong that it made him hotter for Greg than usual. Maybe that was the 'wrong' Greg had picked up on. "You're good with forensics in your own right, Greg."

"We'll see," Greg said simply, and turned in Gil's arms to kiss him stupid. "Maybe.... We'll see."

They would see, whatever Greg wanted, because in the LA area there wouldn't be the stigma of 'sleeping with the boss' following Greg around. He could do whatever he wanted and do it well without Gil accidentally pulling him down.

For now there was Greg's mouth on his and the mattress beneath them when he let himself be pushed backwards with his arms still full of Greg.

"And we're totally having hot kinky monkey sex first thing when the alarm goes off?" They'd have to set the alarm first, but it sounded like a good idea to Gil. If they weren't both too tired right at moment, he'd try it now.

Gil's hands slid to peel Greg's t-shirt off, palms sliding over Greg's back. Disfigured skin and smooth skin whorled together at the bottom of Greg's scars, interesting bittersweet textures under his palms. "As soon as we're undressed. I promise we'll have sex after the alarm. I was tempted to get you in the office...."

"Ahhh, that dirty little boy face will do it every time." Greg obviously thought that was funny. "I was so excited, and you were frowning at Jim, and it was kind of hot, and...." The shirt muffled his voice. "Honestly, it was hard not to yell something stupid, like 'take me now, big boy!'"

It kept Gil from saying that Jim didn't believe cops could go bad, because one minute Greg was talking, the next he was play-shouting a tempting idea into Gil's chest. They'd have the time later, and right then the sleepy hard-on Greg had coaxed him to felt nice, half-stretched out on their bed after coming home from work, after packing a couple of things, checking their answering machine.

Some people might be designed to live a solitary life, but Gil had to admit while he laughed that being with Greg was the best thing of all.

* * *

He could have been at home if he had let Greg out of bed to kill their batteries and flatten a tire. Instead, they had overslept the alarm going off at nine, damn near hadn't made it in to work, and the night was just starting off badly.

"So. Officer Fromansky. Why don't you tell me about this badge."

The man glanced down at the star badge on Jim's desk and then looked back at Brass. "I lost my badge a few years ago. Filed a report, got issued a new one."

"Yeah," Jim said. "I'm aware of officers 'losing' their badges."

"Then we don't have a problem, do we?"

Jim's head tilted to the side. "No. We got a problem 'cause your badge was found in the proximity of a crime scene."

The man gave an irritating shrug that Gil had seen hundreds of times in his career. It never rang true, and there was a reason for it. "Such is life."

"That's not the answer I was hoping for," Gil admitted. At least, he'd been expecting a small lie, maybe the explanation of _'I sold it'_.

Jim frowned. "I've been looking at your jacket. It reads like a novel. You got a lot of entries in here. You got, uh.... beat-and-release. You got some stick therapy. What's up with this?"

Fromansky's eyes rolled towards Gil. "Show me a cop without a few entries in his jacket, I'll show you a pogue."

He hated to bite his tongue like that, the irony thick as Fromansky looked at Gil -- out of shape, older, scientist -- and immediately assumed that had always been the case, and that he'd possibly popped out of the birth canal that way.

"You're referring to me?" He made it less of a question than it was supposed to be.

"Guys like you get to sit on your ass behind a desk because guys like me are out there doing the real work." Taking a stick to suspects, engaging in beat and release tactics. No, there were good cops and bad cops, just like there was good and bad everything, and Gil was ready to shuffle Fromansky at least into the gray section of cops who needed to redefine their morals.

Jim let out a hefty sigh and propped his chin on his hand. "Okay, tough guy. Tell me what you know."

"I lost my badge," Fromansky insisted. "End of story. If I ever find the guy that stole it, be.... what are you doing?" He glanced back and forth between Brass and Grissom, the swab in Gil's hand making his eyes narrow. "I want my union rep."

"I'm it," Jim told him, expression mild.

"I want somebody impartial."

"Yeah, well. I was." Sometimes, the looks Jim gave made Gil go a little cold. "Now, open up."

It didn't stop Gil from standing up, the swab like a tiny sword that prompted Fromansky to open his mouth for something other than loud protest of the situation. "If you could hold your tongue back, I'll get the inside of your cheek."

"I'll just bet." The look in Fromansky's eyes said a lot, and it sent a chill down Gil's spine. Maybe it was a good thing that he and Greg were leaving Vegas after all.

He lifted an eyebrow sharply, and swabbed Fromansky's mouth as quickly as he could and know that it was thorough. In, out, and then Gil stepped back, pulling the plastic shield up before he boxed it. "Brass, I'll take this out for results."

"You do that," Fromansky sniped.

Jim gave him a cool smile. "Don't worry. We will."

Gil hoped that their hunch was wrong, and left the two police in Jim's office to carry on any further verbal sparring without him.

* * *

"You don't look so happy for a guy who just closed one cool case in less than a week, against all possible odds," Catherine stated a few days later, leaning against the door to Grissom's office, or what was left of his office. It was a collection of bare shelves, now -- the tarantulas had been taken home a couple of days before, and it was just a matter of tidying up the last of his specimens and the forensics journals he'd brought with him from home.

It was amazing what an office could collect over sixteen years. Gil hadn't been too surprised that he'd managed to shift everything into two large boxes on his 'lunch break' the day before. Sixteen years, and all he had to do was fill in his last time sheet, finish off the paperwork for his department, and....

That was it.

Gil managed a smile for Catherine. "It left a bitter taste in my mouth. I jumped to the wrong conclusions."

"Yeah, well. The evidence pointed in a couple of crazy directions. You about done in here?" she asked, nodding at his desk. "I think Nicky's on the verge of tears down in the break room, and Greg looks like he might join him. Why don't you come down and we'll take a couple of good pictures for future blackmail purposes?"

"Sure." Why not? Part of him just wanted to disappear, and if he'd just been leaving by himself, he would have. Left short notice, maybe a couple of days, packed up and headed out of the nearest door.

It was harder to disappear like that with Greg there. Gil set down his pen after he signed his name to the time sheet, and scooted his chair back. "Your report on that human soup case was good."

"I hope I never have another one," Catherine groaned. "Of course, so does everybody else who was ever within six foot of me that day. I had to burn my outfit. Now, come on or you'll miss their sad faces."

As if that was supposed to make him walk faster. "I'm coming...." Following her out of his office left a twinge in his chest. No, he didn't like change, particularly when the act of change was slow and lingering. "Greg hasn't been talking about anything but the drive out, and he's now officially had more job offers than I've had."

"Seriously? I figured everybody would be jumping to have you," Catherine replied. Half the office seemed to be lingering in doorways, peering at them. It made Gil faintly nervous. "Greg hasn't mentioned it."

"He probably wouldn't. There're a lot of private labs in the area, and only so many crime labs, and the FBI office out there." He was nervous about that interview, but calm, too. His greatest fear was being offered the job, and having to say 'no' because Greg hadn't meant it when he'd said that it was all right for Gil to try for the interview. After all, he wanted that position. Investigator-cum-lab assistant, no actual involvement in the cases....

It was almost too good to be true.

"Hey! Grissom!" Warrick's voice came from down the hall, maybe in the ballistics lab. "Come here a minute. I want you to see this."

Catherine gave a sigh and rolled her eyes. "Looks like the blackmail opportunities are sliding through our fingers.

"I've had enough over the years." He gave her a smile, and broke away, heading carefully towards what he guessed was the ballistics lab. At least it had sounded like Warrick was there, but his hearing wasn't trustworthy for trying to pinpoint location when he only had half-hearing.

What could Warrick have to show him on his last day?

"This is the coolest thing," he heard Warrick declare, and the lights were off in the ballistics lab. What was it, a glow in the dark bullet?

Oh, no. No, no. Not Warrick.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, he stepped forward and through the threshold of the ballistics lab.

"And just what is it, Warrick?"

"Just this," Warrick said in the dark, and then the lights flared on, and the other half of the lab yelled.

"SURPRISE!"

It took Gil a moment to take it all in. There was a cake on the table in the ballistics room; there were balloons, little cups, plates and soda. The whole team was there, all of his CSIs and the lab techs came into the room behind him, David and Al.... Everyone.

Gil's voice failed him for a long moment while he took in the sight of them all, and Greg coming forward to give him a hug. Catherine patted his back. It was either a debacle or a spectacle, but he wasn't sure what it was yet. "There's.... cake in the ballistics room? I...."

"Like chocolate best?" Greg grinned. "There's ice cream, too. They went all out and everything."

Warrick held out a hand to shake Gil's. "Hey. It's not every day the best boss we ever had leaves us. No offense, Brass."

"None taken."

"I didn't expect...." Gil trailed off, glad that he had one hand behind Greg's back, because he could clutch at Greg a little to steady himself. He hadn't expected anything, except maybe some goodbyes, not, not that. Not actual effort and Warrick saying that while Nick lingered off to the side a little, red-eyed.

"Thank you." There wasn't anything else to say. It was almost humbling, and Gil felt a little flustered.

"We plotted against you," Greg admitted with a grin. "It was the greatest thing EVER."

"Someone should cut the cake." Jim nudged Gil's shoulder a little, and it startled Gil into a faint kind of laugh.

Vegas had been so good to him. Vegas was still good for him. Maybe.... even if they left, it always would be.

* * *

Five hours of driving along behind and sometimes in front of Gil's SUV had sucked.

It sucked because long car rides alone were boring by nature, and Gil had told him to stop trying to use his cell phone and drive after Greg was telling a dirty joke and missed the exit that Gil had taken. That had left Greg with a clover leaf to manage and hours of utter boredom.

Driving through the desert, leaving the desert, had been an amazing view. Everything had slowly gone from brown to green-green-green, everywhere the eye could see, and when Greg had finally seen a glimpse of the ocean, he had nearly wet his pants. Greg loved the water, loved California, and sometimes he wondered why he had ever left. The answer was pretty easy -- his mom and Gunnar.

Still. Coming back was going to be great. Not only would they be living far enough away from San Gabriel as to make visiting a pain in the ass because of the traffic, his parents were highly unlikely to barge in and try to tell him to make something of himself when he was living with Gil. Eventually, of course, they'd pop into his life. Eventually, Poppa Olaf and Isoäiti would invite them to dinner, and it would be a setup. Greg had known that was coming the moment that he and Gil had stopped to leave their electronics with Poppa.

He'd grinned a lot and there'd been talking and threats of keeping their TV set. Greg had just gotten that vibe, that feeling that Poppa wanted to set something up just so he could rub it in Gunnar's face that Greg was doing well. It was kind of a shame. Greg had always wished that he'd been able to have the kind of relationship with his parents that other kids had, the kind that Gil seemed to have had with his mom. Still. He had his grandparents, and that had been enough.

The look on Gunnar's face when Poppa told his father he'd be making twice as much money a year as his dad did might make up for having dinner with them. That would make Gunnar's teeth grind together.

 _He_ had a job at CalSci, and that fascinated him. There was an interview in three days, but after the phone interview, it was just a formality, an exciting one. He had a _job_ because all of his good experience in labs had qualified him for a nice teaching position along with an offer to get his doctorate there.

Life wasn't supposed to be that good, but the way Greg saw it, he'd already had enough weird shit go on that he had it coming. After all, Gil was seriously excited, kid in a candy-store excited, about his interview the next day with the LA branch of the FBI. Regular hours, eight to five, never pulling call.... Gil thought it was perfect, because he would get to do all of the fun stuff that he loved about his job, but he'd get to spend nights and weekends home with Greg, nobody pulling double or triple shifts, and the pay wasn't bad, either.

It was better than just 'not bad' when he took into account that there wasn't going to be a house payment to make every month. There was just going to be a house from the sixties that needed to be fixed up a little.

Greg was kind of scared to guess what the house looked like after years of no one living there. Hopefully there weren't seals living in the living room or turtles in the attic. He'd already bet himself five bucks that there was at least one room painted puce, and another one painted puke-green.

They were so close. They just had to spend another fifteen minutes with Greg's Isoäiti. She had made fattigman and kirsebaerkremkake, and there was no way he was leaving her house without having some of both of them, and making Gil eat it, too.

Nobody should have to live a life without kirsebaerkremkake.

Gil had already guessed it was a cake. "Cognates," Gil had told him and Poppa, "abound in the world."

Poppa was in the kitchen, probably fighting Isoäiti to get an early taste.

"Why don't we tell Isoäiti that we'll take the kirsebaerkremkake with us to the house?" Greg suggested, looking at Gil pleadingly. He was dying to see the place they were going to call home, wanting to figure out what kind of work it would need.

Images never showed the full picture, and Gil didn't like to linger too long over the photos that the house showed up in. He got sad and quiet when he looked at those photos, contemplating things that might have been and never could have been because of all the other things in those pictures.

"Wouldn't that be rude...?" Gil leaned forward a little, smiling as he tented his fingers in front of his mouth.

"Nah," Greg decided. "She knows we're coming back to spend the night, and she knows that I'm dying to see the house, so.... I think she'll probably forgive us." That or she'd outright laugh and say something to them Greg would have to translate.

Gil was tolerant of translating, and he reacted differently to it than most of the people Greg had ever translated around. Greg should have expected it, but he'd been secretly pleased about it. Head cocked a little so he could hear Greg talk, but he looked at Isoäiti while Greg turned her words into English, and kept looking at her when he talked, even through Greg had to translate back.

"We might need to use the cake to bribe animals out of the house."

"Don't scare me, Gil. Just.... don't scare me," Greg warned, noticing his Poppa coming out of the kitchen.

"Isoäiti says to take her cake and go with you. All of your jittering makes her want to box your ears and send you to your room, but she cannot send you there. She likes Gilbert too much," Poppa announced, handing over a container that was undoubtedly full of goodies aside from just cake.

"That's very good to hear." Gil was smiling, a warm, easy smile as he took the box from Poppa's hands. "We'll be back after we.... finish assessing the situation. Do you want Greg and I to bring anything back...?"

"No, no." Poppa waved his hands. "Olga has everything prepared. She's very excited that our Gregor is home, and plans to make all of his favorites. Just be back in time for supper."

"Thanks, Poppa." Greg stood up and planted a kiss on his grandfather's cheek, grinning. "We'll try and be back by eight." Unless they got.... distracted. He kind of hoped they might, because he had a feeling that Gil was going to prove hinky about the idea of getting a blowjob in his grandparent's house, let alone outright sex.

Greg had been good and he wanted to try something as long as there weren't termites infesting the house. "I'll make sure that we're back by eight. Even with traffic," Gil promised. Damn, so much for that excuse.

Greg rolled his eyes, real and prosthetic, and caught the look that his poppa shot him. "Ni måste väntä till nio för middag, din farmor och jag ska bylla som vilda djur," Poppa told him, winking. "Be careful, regardless, Gilbert. You are taking Gregor's car, yes? Don't let him drive like a maniac."

Gil was balancing the cake in one hand as he patted Greg's back gently, a soft urging forward. Finally, a sign that Gil was as eager as he was. It was about damn time. "We'll be very careful, Poppa Olaf -- thank you again. C'mon, Greg.... Oh! Can we take your phone book with us?"

"Phone book?" Greg asked, blinking at Gil even as he started to fumble for his keys.

"Of course, Gilbert." Poppa seemed to understand whatever Gil wanted, but that was just the way of Poppa. "Beside the door, the telephone stand. Beneath it, just there."

"Thanks." Gil grinned as he turned to back step towards the stand where Poppa and Isoäiti kept their one phone. One day, he'd convince Poppa to get a cordless phone and put it upstairs, but at least his Poppa had a cell phone. "Okay, now we have everything."

"But what are you gonna do with it?" Greg asked even as Gil herded him towards the door. "Why the phone book? C'mon, spill. Tell me. What's going on?"

"Contractors. You know, places to call when we realize there's no roof or...." Gil trailed off, turning a little so he could elbow the front door open.

Greg's voice wasn't a pitiful squeak. It wasn't. "No roof?" Yeah. No roof and seals in the living room.

Dear God in heaven, let there be no seals in the living room. It didn't matter if there weren't even seals in the area, because that was their luck that there would be. Or.... something. Greg didn't know what yet, but the worst-case scenario was always a possibility.

Gil seemed just enough aware of it to think of bringing a phonebook.

"Stranger things have happened."

The mere suggestion made Greg twitch. With their luck, Hannibal would be holding a barbecue when they got there. "Let's hope the roof is still there." He could be optimistic. "When was the last time you went by?"

Gil was thoughtfully silent when he held the door open for Greg. Shit, he was just waiting for Gil to say 'sixteen years', and if that was the case, he was definitely going to think of ways to ward off seals and stuff. "Four years ago?"

"Ohh." Well, that was all right. There was no way that the roof would have fallen in since then, right? Greg nodded to himself and headed out, waving goodbye to his Poppa.

There were his keys. Wrong pocket. Gil seemed to have picked up on that, because he was wearing a faintly smug smile, like he was trying not to laugh. At least they hadn't had to ransack the inside of Poppa's house or call a locksmith to get his Jetta open like that time that he had locked his keys in the car. The locksmith showed up a couple of minutes after Gil had finished carefully breaking into Greg's car for him.

"Whatever you're imagining, Greg, the reality isn't half as bad. I promise, and if I'm wrong, you can rub it in."

"I'm imagining puce walls and shag carpeting," Greg noted. "I'm not sure it gets much worse than that, does it?" He danced out of Gil's reach, still grinning, and slid into the car quickly. "C'mon. I'm dying, here!"

"I should give you directions for the scenic route." Gil was moving slow, juggling the cake box and the phone book when he got in, just to tease Greg, just to drag it out even more. "There isn't any carpeting. It's hardwood."

"Oh." Greg liked hardwood, mostly for the opportunities it provided to do the whole Risky Business dance in his underpants.

Gil liked it for that reason, too.

"And the puce?"

"First you need to tell me how you define the color 'puce', because not all people define it the same." Except that Greg was now sure there were hideous colors on the walls, which meant they were definitely going to be making a trip to a hardware store. Maybe they could cover the floors with plastic and then have sex on them. Not that sex was on Greg's mind more than usual, no, not at all. It was just that Gil had taken his time buckling his seatbelt and closing the passenger side door, and they could finally drive off.

"That scary purple-red color that people thought was cool in the sixties and seventies. I'm betting money there's pus-green in there someplace," Greg teased him. Yeah, there wasn't any way to hide his excitement. "Let's go." Backing up, yeah, careful, yeah, VROOOM!

....Okay, from the look he got, Gil wasn't happy about that burst of speed. Greg slowed down.

"We'll never see it if you rocket propel us into a tree." Gil shifted a little, trying not to look like he was bracing himself for impact when he totally was bracing himself for impact. "Molly and Josh and I helped my mother repaint it when we first moved back to LA. So while there was a pus-green on the walls of what was once my bedroom, it's no longer there. The puce, now...."

"I'm secretly okay with puce," Greg confessed. "I mean, it kind of reminds me of bruised raspberries, and that makes me hungry, but I can deal with that. Pus-green and shag carpeting, now...."

"Don't worry. There's some oddities, but.... We'll probably want to paint everything anyway." Make the house theirs more than a place of memory for Gil. "I just hope there isn't an offshore oil rig out this way."

"Yeah," Greg agreed, nose wrinkling. "I just.... I don't care, Gil." Did that sound bad? "I mean, so long as it's a place, and you and me are the ones there.... that makes it pretty much home."

"You make it home, Greg. I would have been happy to live in your apartment if there had been room for the bugs. It...." Gil was looking over at Greg, and Greg knew Gil didn't expect him to look over because he needed to keep his good eye on the road. "'Home is a shelter from storms -- all sorts of storms'."

"Have I mentioned today that I love you?" Greg asked him in all seriousness. "I figure it's pretty obvious, but.... it doesn't hurt to say it."

"I think you mentioned it around five a.m., but it's good to hear." Gil meant that in the most literal of ways, Greg knew, and smirked when he said it. Every once in a while it hit one or the other of them, a particular appreciation for the other person's oddness. It never hurt to mention it, because life was funny and fickle, and change happened when they least expected it.

"Just checking," Greg chuckled, and drove on.

* * *

The house hadn't fallen in yet. That was something to be happy about, even if it did look like it was in need of repairs. A little paint, a few new windows, maybe some landscaping.

Gil wondered how Greg felt about plants, aside from that one potted aloe he insisted on calling Fred. It seemed very doable. Very logically doable, nothing too bad or painstaking in terms of workload, and Gil hadn't been able to stop smiling since he'd keyed open the front door.

There was every reason in the world to keep smiling. Greg had moved to be with him, Greg had uprooted himself, and followed him to a house that Gil had kept joking might have been taken over by wolverines or seals or turtles.

Maybe Gil had been hoping, just a little, about the turtles.

"We don't even have any interesting insect infestations to deal with."

"And there aren't any seals in the living room." The way Greg grinned at him made Gil's breath catch. "But there is one heck of a nice parquet floor in there, and I think I'm in love with the bedrooms."

Wild-haired, with a lopsided smile that made Greg's eyes squint faintly, except where the scar buckled a little bit beneath Greg's left eye. Scars were interesting for the fact that if one was alive and walking about with them, then they were proof of survival. They were proof that one was alive physically, and smiles like that were proof that Greg was alive mentally. If Gil hadn't been holding a flashlight to peek around in the closet -- they were going to have to install some kind of lighting in a space that big -- he would have turned around and kissed him except he would have to drop the flashlight first.

For the time being, he could wait. Just a few minutes, anyway. It was fun to look at his mother's house again, even more fun when Greg ran whooping through the place declaring that he was in love with the size of the bathroom and they were going to have to rip half of it out and modernize it.

Whatever made him happy.

Gil wasn't sure what he'd do with all of the free time that he sensed he'd have now. He couldn't remember the last time he'd worked an actual eight to five job, even if it was probably going to be with the FBI. If they wouldn't have him, there were few enough entomologists of his caliber in the US that he could get a university post.

"I think there's a loose floorboard in here...."

"Yeah?" Greg came back from poking around in the master bathroom to take a peek. "What, did you hide your little green army men in there or something? We could get you some more if you feel the need to tuck them in...." He passed Gil a sly grin. "I'm madly in love with the layout, but.... Gil? The robin's egg blue? It's gotta go."

"I was hoping that you'd say that." Gil set the flashlight down, and leaned back to look at Greg from where he was kneeling half in the empty closet. "Here, give me a hand. I don't actually remember putting anything down under here. So could you hold the flashlight?"

"Holding." Greg took the flashlight and shifted in behind Gil. "Hey, knowing you, they're little green army bugs. You know, my cousin Wilhelm? The one with the whole garage door opener thing? He used to coat 'em in lighter fluid and then set 'em on fire."

"Greg, I never want to meet your cousin, even though I'm sure he's grown up to do something staid and boring like.... investment banking." Gil shifted, leaned a shoulder against the wall, and carefully pried up the loose board.

He only thought, for a minute, that there might be something horrible under there.

"He still has a sheep," Greg said, leaning over him. "He _claims_ that it's for knitting purposes. I think he's the next Ted Kaczynski. What's under there?"

"Shine the light in," Gil instructed as he leaned back a little. There was a shoebox, which suddenly made the whole thing less ominous.

"Shining." Gil shifted, reached his hands in to pull out the box. He slowly lifted the lid from it and peered inside.

Greg's breath caught before his, and Gil had to peer for a moment before his brain kicked into action and filled it in for him. A G.I. Joe. It was the older kind, but he remembered that Josh had had them all because Gil's mom doted on him and liked to spoil him all seasons of the year.

She'd said she liked to have a grandson who played with toys, since Gil never really had. That still didn't explain how it had gotten there, how 'Duke' had come to be interred under a loose floorboard with his rifle clutched against his chest, an assortment of toy cars stuffed in the box with him.

"Hey, I used to have one of those," Greg said. "Gunnar thought if I played with soldiers instead of chemicals or the box of Mom's Barbie dolls that Isoäiti kept stored in the guest room, it would make a man of me or something. I, uh, just dressed him up in the wedding dress from the Tracy and Todd wedding couple that Isoäiti bought me."

"Bet you couldn't get the back of the dress to close." Gil shifted, sat down in the relatively small space of the closet, and kept inspecting the inside of the box. "This is where Josh used to stay when we visited."

"Isoäiti sewed extra material on the dress when she figured out I liked to change outfits. My bride doll always ended up naked, and Duke married the groom." Greg reached out, fingers carding into Gil's hair gently. "He probably put it there playing some kind of game...."

"Treasure hunt." The soft, musing strokes felt good to Gil's scalp, and he closed his eyes a little in memory. Yeah, they were going to have to repaint everything for him to ever walk into a room and not think of something that had happened years before. "He used to bury his toys in the sand before he realized he could never find them again."

"Yeah. I, uh, did that a time or two. That's where all the Barbies from Mom's little box went, actually. She still kinda gives me dirty looks about that," Greg admitted. "Hey. C'mon. Let's walk out on the back deck. It's in great shape."

Gil was tempted to put the box back to rest beneath the board, but he put the board back down, and decided just to leave it in the closet. It was best that way. It wasn't as if Josh would be coming back to find it.

"Nothing loose...?" He waited until Greg backed up a little so he could stand up and get out of the closet.

"Couple boards on the outside, couple on the steps that'll have to be replaced, but...." It was obvious that the deck excited Greg. "It's gorgeous. There's no offshore oil stuff anywhere close to visible, and the sun's about to set. We could...."

He loved that little flirtatious glance from beneath lashes, the way that Greg looked at him when he wanted something. When he wanted Gil. There was a subtle difference between _'I want a donut'_ , _'I want your coffee'_ , _'I want to watch a really bad movie'_ , and _'I want you'_ , even if all of those looks involved variant flirty looks.

Gil dusted off his knees, and then reached for Greg, reached to grab on to him. "When did your poppa say he wanted us back by?"

"Um, not before nine. He said, and I quote, 'You must wait until nine for dinner, your grandma and I are going to shag like wild animals.' End quote." Greg laughed and gave a squirm that implied that he was in the mood for something similar. "This is nothing surprising, all things considered."

"All things considered, I think you're proven that libido can be genetic." It felt good to get his hands on Greg, an arm around his waist, and then his hand at Greg's jaw, tilting his head a little to hold him for a kiss that Gil didn't have to hold Greg still to get.

It was all mouth and tongue, wet, deep, hot. Greg kissed like it would be the last one they'd get, every time, like something out of a Hollywood movie. Gil had asked him about it once, and he had shrugged and said that love should include great romance movie kisses.

A year later, that hadn't faded. Gil hoped it never would.

"Yeah, well, with any luck I'll still have it when we've both got remote control penises."

"I hope that by then, science will have advanced on to better designed devices. After all, we have a universal remote. What if you went to turn on the DVD player and you accidentally gave yourself an erection?" It was hard not to grin while he took a backwards step and then kissed Greg again. Greg was right, too. Kisses like that were something that love should include.

"Yeah, well. So long as you're with me, I'm pretty sure it'll be okay if that's the result of turning on the DVD player. Hey.... do you think if we got naked on the back deck, the neighbors would notice?"

"I'm fairly sure that the other houses are summer cabins." He still remembered the layout of the house well enough to walk backwards, taking Greg with him because Greg felt good against his body. "And I didn't see a car in the driveway next door...."

"We could do anything we want. Anything _you_ want," Greg told him, leaning down to nip at the softening line of Gil's jaw. "I'd dance the flamenco naked out there if you wanted. Except I hope you don't."

"Greg, you know how my tastes run...." Damn, that felt good. Gil's hands clutched faintly at Greg's hips, and he clipped the edge of the doorjamb with his shoulder. "I think we should make the most of wide open spaces and a beautiful day outside with no one around for any reasonable distance."

"You like me naked," Greg murmured against his throat. It tickled, made Gil's breath catch every time. "You like me riding you." That was true, because Greg was damned good at it. "You like me sliding inside your hot ass with my dick."

Perfect little pervert. They'd be coming up on two years sooner than Gil had thought, and every minute of it had been worth it. Every minute, from happy to sad to scared to strained was worth if it because he had a beautiful, intelligent, fun lover who had stayed with him through things that no sane person signed up for. Being a little crazy, Gil decided, probably made life easier. As it was, Greg was making him hard, really hard, enough to muddle his concentration as he reached behind himself to pop open the screen door that led out onto the porch. "I like you however I can get you, and I like _seeing_ you, because you're always gorgeous...."

Losing an eye hadn't impaired Greg's sense of self-worth, or his own feeling that he was a good-looking man. Gil had carefully reinforced that, and it had been good for both of them. Greg was already kicking off his shoes before they were all the way out of the door, and working on the buttons of Gil's shirt. "I know," he said a little smugly. "I know, because I feel the same way."

The lick he gave the cleft of Gil's chin declared it.

"Then we're very lucky to know each other, mn?" Gil tightened the arm around Greg's waist, just a little, and slid his free hand down between Greg's stomach and the waistband of his jeans. It wasn't an effortless gesture, but he could pop the button and undo the zipper easier and then Gil had his hand over Greg's cock and down his opened pants.

"Unnnh." Gil was pretty sure that it was the closest thing to coherency Greg could manage. His entire body arched into that touch as if it had been weeks since Gil's fingers closed around him instead of a couple of days ago. "So good. So.... oh. Oh."

Touching Greg, feeling Greg's stomach press against his arm when Greg took in a deep breath on that last 'oh' never lost the novelty. He knew every inch of Greg, had spent hours, probably a total of weeks, learning Greg, and it never ceased to bring Gil a little sense of warm wonder.

He molded Greg upright despite the denim and his boxers. "You're already slick. Were you this hard on the drive over, Greg?"

"Uh-huh." Uh-huh, and Gil knew it. He hadn't missed Greg's faint squirms so much as he had ignored them, and now the other man was pushing against him. "Uh-huh. Always. Wanted to be home, with you. Where we'll be. Couldn't.... hmmm. Help it."

"Mm." Mmm, because the railing of the porch was sturdy when he backed Greg up to it and it was easy for Gil to use his free hand to squirm down Greg's jeans if Greg was holding still. "I get to add 'housing' to my mental list of what gets you hot."

"Hey. Take me to Lowe's. I'll blow you in the bathroom displays," Greg offered breathlessly. A quick squirm made his jeans slide down his thighs, leaving his ladybug-clad ass pressed to the rail. "The bathroom setups make me hot," he teased, one hand sliding into Gil's shirt.

A smooth palm slid over his side, pressing and teasing almost where he knew Gil had a ticklish spot. Gil was sure that Greg would save that for rolling around on the sand, because he was so hard, too worked up to distract them both from Gil's hand slowly jacking Greg off.

Gil felt it when Greg leaned forward, buried his face against Gil's neck. His breath was warm and damp, and the sound of his whimpers made Gil want to bend him over the rail where they stood.

"God. Oh God. Oh God."

The best part of sex with Greg was never knowing who was going to do what until it happened. Greg leaning into him like that felt so good, so good that Greg was careful to lean in to Gil's left side so he could hear the whimpers more than just feel hot breath against his skin and hot skin under his fingers.

"Should I stop...?"

"Don't stop. Don't stop."

Don't stop, and the steady, tiny pushes Greg made into his hand let Gil know he liked it. With Greg, everything was almost always fast and now, now, now, but when it slowed down, he went to pieces, things became distorted and perfect in ways that Gil knew he had a hard time handling.

It was easy to follow Greg's lead, but sometimes, sometimes Gil wanted slow and drawn out and he wanted Greg to feel it. They had the time for that, and for soothing Greg down afterwards, for enjoying the scenery. "Shhhh, it's not a race." He squeezed Greg's dick firmly at the base, and leaned back a fraction.

Greg still had his t-shirt on.

"Love you." It was barely mewled, a soft sound against his throat. "Love you. Love you. So much. Too much. So...." A jerk of hips pressed Greg forward, the feel of his chest rising and dropping against Gil's making Gil shift, kiss at his temple.

"I love you, too. Let's finish getting undressed and see what we want to do...." All he had to go was shrug out of his shirt and his pants and.... everything, while Greg had jeans around his knees and boxers and a t-shirt.

Gil had to admit that he wore too many clothes. He never realized it until he had Greg half-undressed and ready to jerk a few more times into his hand to perfection.

"Oh-okay."

He was the only one who got to see Greg this way. He was the only one who saw kiss-bruised mouth, all good humor faded in the light of slow and serious and _hot_ in a way that made Greg tremble. It made Gil want to touch him even more, but now wasn't the time. Not just yet. Now was the time to watch him kick off his sneakers, squirm out of his t-shirt and put it down so that at least there wouldn't be splinters in anybody later.

That wouldn't be a problem after Gil refinished the porch and water-sealed it properly again. For now jeans and shirts and Gil's trousers, when he took them off, would do well enough. Never mind that they didn't have lube, which had just now struck Gil while he looked at Greg's motions, while the sun caught the edges of the scars on Greg's back.

They could work that out.

"Wanna see what I've got?" Greg offered him, mouth twitching into a tiny flirtatious smile, the kind that made Gil's breath catch. He held up two fingers, little packets caught between them.

That answered what Greg had been doing in the rest-stop bathroom when Gil had stopped to get gas.

"You never cease to surprise me." Gil was only part way through stepping out of his boxers when Greg flashed the packets.

"I hope I keep right on surprising you. Besides...." Greg stretched out in a way that caught Gil's eye. "You know how I like playing with restroom condom dispensers."

The stretch made Greg long and lean, muscles moving easily over Greg's body. His cock bobbed with the motion, the red flushed head tempting Gil. "I remember the one that was less a condom and more like silly putty. C'mere."

"Why don't you come here?" Greg asked, inviting him closer. Still, he sat up, hands reaching to be placed lightly against Gil's hips. For a moment, Gil thought he wouldn't move, but then he felt Greg working the clasp of his pants loose. "Closer."

All he had to do was lean forward, settling into the idea that Greg was kneeling and God Greg's mouth was hot when it tipped just so, happy and serious all at once while he threatened Gil's control with a blow job. Maybe that was just Gil hoping, projecting because Greg was kneeling and undoing his pants while Gil was already hard and wanting Greg.

The flash of Greg's tongue made him breathe in deeply, and then Greg opened his lips and sucked in the very head, making a noise around it that went straight to Gil's knees. Moments like this, he was grateful to at least be able to hear that, to be able to reach forward and slide his fingers through messy hair and cup Greg's scalp. Grateful to be there at all, and to know that the sex was good and the mere living together was just as good. They fit and worked well around each other, picked up on cues and worked with subtleties.

The only subtlety that Gil could manage just then was the feel of Greg's hair and hair-gel under his fingers, the way that Greg made a slurp noise that went right to Gil's balls when Greg pulled back a little, the way that Greg peeked up at him as flirtatious and easy about it as he had ever been.

It was almost enough to make him want to finish right then, but there was too much finishing lately and not enough time taking. He was determined this would last, thumb rubbing slowly over Greg's right cheekbone, tracing the faintest of scars and connecting freckle-dots.

Five, six.... Gil pressed down a shiver when he traced the edge of his thumb faintly over a seventh mark, because not even that could distract him from the insistent way Greg sucked. That left Gil with distracting Greg a little to keep things slow, his other hand sliding to cup the back of Greg's head, fingertips rubbing gently over the lines of muscle that they both knew made Greg weak at the knees.

Whimpers spread through his cock and into his balls, something of a backfire for Gil. Still. Still, Greg's arms were wrapping around Gil's thighs, holding him tightly, and when Greg pulled away, Gil wanted to yell. "God, I l-love it when you do that," Greg stuttered, his face pressed into Gil's hip.

Exhale, slow, and inhale, again. He could feel Greg's breath, could feel Greg's hands clutching at his ass with a little less purpose than usual. Gil's erection was still there, wet and jutting out, ignored for the moment because Gil's fingers were still moving, working tension gently away from the base of Greg's neck. "I know."

"Tease," Greg murmured, turning his face in and giving a heated breath that caressed wetly over the crease where thigh met groin. "Oh, God. _Gil_. We're here. It's.... I want...."

Sometimes, Gil didn't dare to fill in that 'I want', didn't dare to jump to conclusions. Sometimes, when they were going slow, it was just easier to ask. "What do you want, Greg? You can have.... anything."

Brush of lashes, nose, the faint curl of tongue. "You. Just.... you." As if Greg had never wanted anything else from the sound of it. As if he had never thought anything else could fulfill him.

When Greg kissed his hip, pressed closer, it was almost easy to forget everything else that had ever passed in Gil's life, and Gil knew it was much the same for Greg. He knew that Greg could lose himself in the feeling and not trip on memory the way that Gil did.

Gil's fingers shifted, his other hand curling against the back of Greg's shoulders. "You have me, wherever you want me."

"With me. That's the only place I ever want you to be." Greg's mouth curved as he looked up at Gil. "So. Why don't you come down here before I'm tempted to suck you off, and this ends earlier than I think you want it to?"

"I can't. I'm being kept standing by a tempting young man who has his hands on my ass. Maybe if you could ask him to move back a little...." Gil traced a thumb forward, sliding over the edge of Greg's collarbone, and he grinned back at Greg.

"I'll talk to him about that," Greg promised, but he didn't move for long seconds. When he finally did, Gil could feel the reluctance he had to pull away, even though Greg smiled as he laid back on their clothes. "Sometimes, that guy gets kind of clingy. I think it's because you're so hot. I'd be kinda clingy, too."

"It's been a long day with a lot of driving and suddenly he's in a whole new state with a new house, so...." Gil knelt down, then stretched out and leaned forward to kiss Greg's mouth, slow and teasing, pulling back after too short a kiss so he could keep talking. "It's understandable."

"Maybe he just likes holding onto you," Greg suggested. The sun was casting shadows from the rails across them, the breeze blowing in off of the ocean slowly turning cool. "I mean, all things considered."

It felt good. It felt like a good reminder that they'd left behind them the soaring heat of the high dry desert and that there was an ocean behind them. Gil let his eyes fall closed a little, looking down at Greg's face for a moment before he pressed his mouth to the edge of Greg's faintly parted lips.

"He's done a very good job, holding onto me."

"I think he'll keep at it," Greg said loud enough for him to hear, and then turned his mouth to capture Gil's, kissing him with a hunger that wasn't surprising. Greg's hands were on him, feet as well, pushing away the last faint remnants of anything that might have been covering Gil and keeping his skin away from Greg's touch.

He'd lost more pairs of boxers that way, but it was worth it. Gil would have to be insane to value his underwear more than he valued the way that Greg felt, and the way that all it took was a shift for him to line their hips up, cock pressed to cock until Greg wanted to squirm and gave sounds up into his mouth. There were hands tracing everywhere, legs that captured Gil's own thigh effortlessly, and then they were rocking under the sun. One of Greg's hands moved, shifting to the side as if he needed to cling to the boards beneath them to keep from flying away, and Gil knew the feeling. Knew the feeling of losing himself to it, of slowly letting go and letting the sensation override him. They could start and end that way, kissing slowly, rocking hip to hip for long minutes until they both came.

"Beautiful," Greg murmured against his good ear. Gil thought he honestly believed it, too, felt that it was true. "Love you, Gil. You're so perfect. You're...." Greg shifted so that they fell out of alignment just a little, just enough to prompt Gil to move and reach for the foil packets lying not far from them.

It was a good thing that sex wasn't usually too far from Greg's brain when they had free time, and that he had played with the rest-stop dispensers before they'd gotten back on the road.

Greg would shower him with compliments for hours if Gil let him, and probably the other way around, but Gil tried not to catch and stop himself when he was doing it to Greg. "Just perfect? I was going to say the same about you, but now it sounds almost trite.... Do you want this?"

Strong, steady fingers reached out and took the packet of lube from Gil. All it had taken was settling into normality, normal _life_ , and his hands had stopped shaking at all. "Mine," Greg declared, amused. He ripped it open, and Gil watched in fascination as he rubbed two slick fingers together.

He shifted back a little, dropped the condom onto the porch, and leaned on his elbows as he watched Greg's gooey finger and thumb rub together. "That looks very dirty, Greg."

"I'm a very dirty boy," Greg answered, giving a little laugh. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

"Come onto my porch?" Gil shifted, and tried to keep himself from commenting on either the spider or the fly as he watched Greg's playful, teasing motions. It felt good to be stretched out in sunshine, outside and with Greg so close. Close enough to kiss again if he leaned up and reached out to snag him and pull him in, and Greg leaned up to him instead.

There was no hiding the way Greg's palm landed on his ass, or the not-so-subtle manner in which his fingers delved between Gil's cheeks. "Whatever works," he murmured, reaching one hand to pull Gil closer. "Porch. Parlor. Penises. Porn. I like P words. Too much Sesame Street when I was a kid."

With Greg moving, finally, it was easy for Gil to shift, scooting closer to him, spreading his legs so that Greg could keep making his obscene gestures with slicked fingers, but where it counted. "It's a good thing that you're perky and pragmatic, then, and that you have a very functioning penis." Gil couldn't see Greg's dick, not when his other hand was coming up to pull at Greg's shoulder, but he could reach past his own erection to brush fingers over Greg's.

"I love it when you do that." Greg loved it no matter what he did, and Gil knew it. That motion didn't distract Greg from sliding his fingers across the tight hole between Gil's cheeks, or from slowly pushing one against it. "I love the way you feel." That fingertip pushed, slithered, and Gil pressed back to it, and.... "God. You're so hot."

It felt 'hot', half-teasing Greg's cock and bracing himself for the sensation by just touching Greg, keeping sensation vivid and grounded in reality. It was the best way to keep elements of nightmares from stirring up in his sleep if he braced against them during the day. Greg was so real and made it so easy for Gil not to think about anything, anyone but all of the times that Greg had gooped up his fingers and twisted a finger into him, one and then two and sometimes his thumb.

Gil didn't need more than that to prep.

"How do you want to do this?" Greg asked, struggling a little. It was obvious that he wanted to hurry things along, but this time, they were going at Gil's pace, and it was very nice. Gil loved it, and it was obvious from the look on Greg's face that this time, at least, he probably wasn't going to burst into tears over it.

That didn't stop Gil from leaning up to kiss Greg's uncertain-seeming mouth. "Just like this." He didn't say 'slow', but he could say that with motion, could just see what happened and let it happen.

He saw Greg pull in a deep breath and smile. "Okay. Just like this." Just one finger, slowly fucking into him while Greg tried to breathe deeply and stay calm. There was something about seeing him like that, something that made Gil's mouth curl up in a pleased smile. Beauty was Greg, out of control and pleading for more.

Exquisite was Greg trying to hold onto himself to please someone else.

"Uhhn. Just.... like that." Gil half-moaned that confirmation, and gave a shaky exhalation when Greg brushed his fingertip just so, just perfectly over Gil's prostate. It suddenly made it hard to keep teasing Greg. It made it hard to think, even when that finger withdrew, only caressing over that place every so often, almost as if Greg was teasing him instead.

"Just like that?" Greg asked him, and Gil knew he was teasing.

He managed a laugh, and pressed his fingers against Greg's stomach, rubbing Greg's pre-come over muscles that were familiar to his hands. "Yeah." If Greg thought he could get Gil to beg mercy....

Gil wouldn't say it wouldn't work, but he knew Greg would have to try harder. He didn't think Greg was trying, because Gil had seen it when he did. He seemed to recall howling at the ceiling at the time.

"I'm so hard," Greg groaned, shifting under him. "Tell me. Tell me when...." There was another finger, sliding so deep. It forced Gil to take a deep breath to try and keep control of himself. "Fucking love this...."

He swallowed a groan, and shifted, body language too close to begging for it, closer than his voice was. He dug a heel into what felt like porch and the edge of Greg's jeans, and used it as leverage to lift his hips up onto Greg's thighs, push himself deeper onto that finger, down to Greg's knuckles.

"Nn, fuck."

"Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind," Greg teased him, reaching up a hand to tug Gil closer. "On top. Your pace." When they got down to phrases as opposed to full sentences or laughter or even moans, Gil knew they were both ready. All Gil had to do was assent.

He drew a steadying breath, pushed back again, and nodded. "Okay." That was the most he could manage and that made Gil want to laugh at himself, words cut out from under him by idle fingers that stole out of him and shifted to his hips.

"Come on up," Greg offered, flexing his cock idly between Gil's legs. "Have a seat. Take a load off." It was inevitable that Greg would find words again. That was his nature. Sometimes he'd yell things out in the middle of sex that made almost as much sense as his sleep garble. Gil loved that about him, too.

Sleep garble, and stuffed germs and drool dried at the corner of his mouth and limbs everywhere, and eating the fruit out of the fruit bowl while Gil was still cutting it. Every little quirk and habit was noteworthy.

"You might live to regret this," Gil warned as he shifted to kneel.

"I've lived to regret a lot," Greg told him calmly. "But I've never regretted anything that had to do with you, and this isn't about to make me change my mind." Gil felt one hand shift off of his hip, down to his thigh, and then between them, helping Greg to aim, hold himself still.

It was, Gil was more than ready to admit, more than a little awkward, kneeling over Greg when Greg was kneeling, but they were roughly face to face when Gil tilted his head down to nip just below Greg's earlobe. "Good."

Good, and then he shifted, settled down, and Gil could hear it when Greg lost all of his breath, a drastic hitch accompanied by a faint jerk upwards. "Oh, fuck," he squeaked out, fingers tightening desperately against Gil's thigh.

Gil was sure, too, that he'd made some kind of sound, a gasp, probably, when he felt the pressure of soft skin made steely with blood flow. Pressure, pressing, and then when Greg let out a shuddering sigh, Gil could feel the head of Greg's cock slip in and then just stop.

It took a moment to adjust, to go from faint probing sensation to ready for that, to sliding his hands around behind Greg and bracing himself as he pressed down.

The slow slide in felt even better than the initial shock of entry.

"Oh my fucking God, I love it when we do this. Love it. Love it. Feels so good. Love having a penis. Love your hot _ass_ , oh, Jesus, love it when you fuck me, love fucking you, love, love."

One of these days, he was going to get Greg a cock ring, with peridot on it or in it somehow, as a half-serious gag gift.

Later. He'd plot that later along with a thousand other important things, because for now all that existed was his ass and Greg's dick and a faint notion that moving up and down, fingers twitching against Greg's back, was a very good idea.

Greg was murmuring in his ear, hand pressed just above his ass, and the words were soft, indistinct, not entirely real. It was Gil's pace, slow and steady, almost perfectly in time with the way the waves crashed in on the beach so nearby. "Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, fuck, so good. So good. Oh, fuck...." Oh, fuck, Greg was sliding in a finger beside his cock.

It made Gil freeze after the downward shift, and maybe he only imagined the way his whole body hitched at the intrusion. Fuck, fuck he hadn't been expecting that, and _that_ was a new thing for Greg to try just then, throwing Gil off balance as much as Gil was throwing Greg off balance.

It made his cock throb against Greg's stomach, and even though Gil bent his head down, lips pressed to Greg's shoulder, he started to move again.

"Jesus," Greg whined, rocking into him. "Oh my God. Gil. Gil. Gil."

Shaking, whining sound, right in his good ear because Gil wanted to hear it. Wanted to hear Greg moan and whine while Gil swallowed down another low groan, moving faster now. Up and down up and down, and as the motions started to shift out of control he could still differentiate between Greg's dick and Greg's finger.

At least he managed that.

"So good. So. Oh. Oh fuck!" A squeak in his ear, and Gil knew that Greg was going to go off soon, that he was so close that it verged on impossible to hold back. Slow and teasing enough, then, because Greg twitched his finger, twisted it, and it made Gil twinge, made his dick twitch. All he needed was a little friction, or a little more motion.

Just.... a little. More.

It was a surprise when it hit, because Gil had figured that he had another couple of minutes. Sex with Greg always snuck up on him like that, though, so it shouldn't be any kind of shock, except it _was_ because it was there, there, there, behind his eyes and shuddering at the base of his spine, spewing out of his cock.

It was just semen, logically just a bodily fluid being released, but there was a sweet relief to it that made sex worth it, sex in odd hot positions. A tensing and temporary loss of muscle control that made his head bow down, made his body curl against Greg's in that position, closer than they'd already been.

Greg had come, and his finger was still inside of Gil along with his softening dick.

"Would it be bad if we fell asleep here?" Greg asked him drowsily long moments later, slow to remove finger and cock. "Because I could."

Gil's legs had locked up in the kneeling over Greg's lap position, and his hands were heavy against Greg's back. It felt good, and he was a little hazy, enough to agree internally. "You'll get a sunburn and I'll tan with railing lines on my face."

It was going to take an act of god to get him to open his eyes, though. Gil knew there was a reason why he liked to have sex in bed. Particularly after a long trip like the one they'd made that day.

"Mmm. Your lily white ass would burn, too, so I guess that means we have to get up," Greg decided, yawning. "Hey, Gil?" He paused a moment. "Can we get a hot tub out here?"

Gil shifted, straightened his back, and forced himself to open his eyes, in no real particular order. "Once I water seal the porch first. Let's go inside and test the shower...."

He shouldn't have looked beyond Greg, over his shoulder, and towards the neighboring house.

"Hey.... you okay?" Greg asked him, frowning as Gil stiffened. "What's wrong? Is there a giant tarantula come to terrorize us or an anteater or...?"

There was a tall, leggy blonde woman standing on the porch that he was looking out towards. For a moment he had the horrifying thought that it was Agent Starling, but that was mere paranoia. Until then, he'd forgotten all about Alice Welterly, the Girl Next Door who'd stood him up at prom all those years ago.

"Greg? I'm going to stand up, grab my clothes, and head into the house. You should do the same and _don't_ turn around...."

"Huh?" Greg couldn't just do what Gil told him. There was some deep inner need to do the exact opposite in almost any non-life-threatening situation, and this was no exception. "Huh," he said. "There's a blonde lady. I think she looks like she's going to hurl." Instead of grabbing his clothes once Gil pulled away, he stood up and waved.

Gil would've wasted the time to stare and groan, but he preferred grabbing his clothes -- well flattened by now -- and walking calmly to the back door. As reluctant as Gil was to be inclined to exhibitionism, he wasn't going to panic because someone, a neighbor that they were going to probably have to interact with who'd known him back when he'd been Will Graham, had seen him getting fucked.

By his very oblivious to his own nakedness lover.

"She covered her dog's eyes! Now that's just wrong. I mean, come on. Like the _dog's_ gonna be traumatized. I'll bet it even licks its own butt. Hey! Can we have a dog, too?" Greg asked, hurrying after him.

"She -- you're joking?" No, no, Greg wasn't joking and it was suddenly so very funny to Gil, pushing down his knee jerk need for privacy by the time that Greg was close enough to grab onto. "I wish I had seen...."

"You could have if you hadn't gone searching for your underpants." Greg grinned at him. "So, I guess that's a so much for this being mostly summer homes, huh?"

Gil pressed a kiss against Greg's cheekbones. "I think we were distracted when I would have otherwise heard her car drive up. She.... stood me up at prom, Greg. After that she was such an unimportant person that it hadn't crossed my mind that she still lived here." Probably with her dog and her husband and her 2.5 kids, all of whom would hear about the new neighbors and wouldn't that insure being left alone?

There was a bright side to everything.

"Huh." Greg seriously considered the matter. "Think we have time to search up a couple of fire ant beds at one of the local nurseries and transplant them next time we come back from Vegas?"

And Gil laughed.


End file.
